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Dead Love has Chains

M. E. BRADDON

AUTHOR OF
'LADY AXIDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN," "LONDON PRIDE," ETC.

COPYRIGHT EDITION'

5^

LEIPZIG

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1907.

W

vA/ /^^

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

CHAPTER I.

Lady Mary Harling was going back to Eng-
land, after a winter in Ceylon. She was too idle,
too utterly without ambitions or views, to be free
from chronic illness. She suffered from a ten-
dency to asthma, in a very mild form, always
talked of by herself and her friends as her asthma;
as if it were a rare and peculiar malady, while
there were dressmakers' assistants and factory
girls in London reckoned by thousands, who were
afflicted in the same manner, and who took the
thing as a matter of course, just an occasional
shortness of breath that made hard work and
long hours a shade more irksome. In White-

6 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

chapel and Bennondsey it was everybody's asthma,
occasioning frequent visits to the Dispensary; in
Hertford Street, May fair, it was Lady Mary Har-
ling's asthma, and a theme for fashionable physicians
to expatiate upon with unctuous solicitude, meditat-
ing, or seeming to meditate, profoundly, before they
advised the precise spot upon this globe that would
be best for their cherished patient in the coming
winter. Last year it had been Assouan, and the
year before it had been Cairo, and the year be-
fore that St. Moritz, and before that Meran. This
last winter had been spent in Ceylon; and Lady
Mary was going home bored to death with all that
she had seen and done, the gardens, temples,
palaces, bazaars, people — most of all the white
people she knew in England. She was going
home, not happy, but resigned, knowing that there
v/as more boredom waiting for her — the impalpable
invisible black devil of ennui in town and country,
in her too spacious house in Hertford Street, in her
fine old Georgian mansion in Hampshire, on the
edge of the New Forest.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. f

'' Needless to say that Lady Mary had one of
the best cabins, midship, on the upper deck of the
Electro, one of the finest steamers recently built
by the most renowned company trafficking in pas-
sengers only between the Thames and the Hoogly.
It was a cabin for three, adapted for one, and
in a smaller cabin on the same expensive deck she
had her maid and her souffre-douleur, a dowerless
kinswoman of six-and-twenty, whom she had taken
to herself eight years before, when the girl was
young and pretty, and when her friends hoped that
in such distinguished surroundings she might make
a comfortable, or even a brilliant mamage. The
poor child's chances in the matrimonial line were
blighted by a terrible sorrow that came upon
Lady Mary in the second year of Daisy Meredith's
service, a calamity that put a sudden end to all
foregatherings of the young and lively in Hertford
Street, or at Cranford Park. As years wore on
Lady Mary had seen more society; but she seemed
to have taken an aversion to young people, and never
had any of them about her. ■■ .

^ DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"I can't amuse them, and they don't amuse me,**
she said, when her intimates accused her of cultivat-
ing dulness.

She let the Cranford shooting, and gave the
money to a Bournemouth hospital. Her friends were
all of them p^st forty, some grave and learned,
some frivolous and pleasure-loving, but none young.
From young men in particular she shrank with a
kind of disgust. She could better put up with girls.
This was a consequence of the great grief that had
come upon her suddenly when Daisy Meredith was
nineteen.

Daisy at twenty-six had made up her mind to a
life of spinsterhood, and did not even know that she
was still pretty. She was attached to her friend
and protectress, who had taken her from a shabby
home in an interminable road in the dismal north
of London, and from her place as buffer between
a father and mother who quarrelled incessantly
when they were together, and who occasionally
separated, but always made the mistake of coming
together again. The life in Hertford Street was

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 9

elysium after the life in the Seven Sisters Road;
and Daisy was able to be of more use to her
mother by little gifts out of her handsome allow-
ance than ever she had been as buffer. The allow-
ance was called pocket-money, and everybody
knew her as a useful cousin, and not a salaried
companion.

Somewhere in the hull of the ship there was a
footman, whose most arduous duties during the
voyage were limited to the careful placing of her
ladyship's deck-chair, rugs, and sun-umbrellas, on
the promenade deck, generally wrong as to wind
and sun till corrected by one of the ship's officers,
and in fetching and carrying books and magazines
and work bags at Miss Meredith's bidding. Like
most women of large means and no ambitions. Lady
Mary was an accomplished needle -woman, deeply
interested in eveiy revival of old art in pictorial
embroidery. Her latest task was a panel for a
screen, a landscape of Dutch formality, with a row
of poplars in a laborious raised stitch, every tree
requiring months of patient toil. The panel, closely

?0 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

veiled in tissue paper, was stretched on a frame,
and to establish this conveniently for Lady Mary's,
labour was a work of time. It gave the cousin and
maid and footman something to do every morning,
either on the open deck or in the ladies' drawing-
room, and to re-establish it in her ladyship's cabin
after luncheon.

Lady Mary had acknowledged to eight-and-
forty for the last three years, but was believed,
from the evidence of history, to be older. She
had been seventeen years a widow, and was still
handsome enough to bring no shame upon hand-
some clothes. Dress was a subject to which she
gave serious thought, and she considered herself
successful. She loved bright colour; in her houses,
and in her gowns.

"I had rather be garish than dull," she told
people.

That great sorrow, the unutterable grief of six
years ago, had spread so dark a pall over the life
of the heart, that she had been forced to take
pleasure in externals..

DEAD lo\t: has chains. ^f

"I have only things to interest me," she said.
**I am always bored, but I make a good fight
against boredom."

She was a member of the Dante Society, and
took a keen delight in their proceedings, and read
a little Dante every day as piously as her Bible.
She took Daisy Meredith to all the best concerts of
the season, to hear all the old favourites, and all the
new prodigies on piano or fiddle.

"It is good for you, if it sometimes bores me,"
she said, .fj ^,.^,.,f ,■ ; ;., ...-^, ; ;■,;'■; ;^.,! v ;. .'V,'--

So it will be seen that Daisy Meredith did not
eat the bread of tears, albeit no lover had come a-
wooing.

...^ The double cabin that Daisy shared with Margot,
the devoted Provencal maid, was near the stem.
Lady Mary's neighbours on one side were a Colonel
and his wife, and on the other side there was a
two-berth cabin occupied by a young lady from
■Calcutta with her maid, a young lady who was too
ill or too unhappy to appear in public, and whom
Lady Mary had not seen. She had encountered

12 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

the maid several times in the corridor, a middle-aged
woman, sour-visaged and severe.

"I'm afraid your young lady is very ill," she said
to the maid one morning. "I heard her sobbing
and moaning last night."

The woman pinched her lips, and answered
curtly:

"Hysterical."

She brushed past Lady Mary, and disappeared
in the cabin.

"What a churlish person to have charge of a
sick girl," thought Lady Mary, full of pity for the
distressed fellow-creature whose low moaning, broken
now and then by a suppressed sob, had kept her
awake between two and three o'clock in the morn-
ing.

They were in the stifling heat of the Red Sea,
and every port-hole was open, and sounds were
audible from cabin to cabin.

The moaning sound was in the hot heavy air
when Lady Mary fell asleep, and she heard it
again when she awoke at six o'clock. After that

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 1 3

there was only silence in the girl's cabin — and
no sound of speech all the morning, though Lady
Mary could hear the door opening and shutting,
the maid going in and out, the clinking of cup
and spoon when the girl was taking her breakfast.
No speech.

She thought much of this solitary girl, after her
encounter with the cross-grained attendant. Girls
are not hysterical for nothing. The moaning and
sobbing in the silent night hours could only mean
mental distress. What was the sorrow that watched
with her in those dreary night hours? Was it grief
at being parted from a lover; or mourning for some
near and dear one lately lost: father, mother, sister,
brother?

And to be solitary in her sorrow, with no one
near her but her hard-featured, unmannerly maid!
Lady Mary's heart went out to this unknown girl in
her loneliness, a heart full of pity and yearning.

"I must do something," she thought. "I can't
lie here, night after night, like a log, while that girl
hugs her sorrow. Surely sympathy, soothing words

14 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

from a motherly woman, might bring her some little
comfort."

She had said no word about the lonely girl to
Daisy, who was all kindness for her fellow-crea-
tures, nor to her maid, Margot, whose exuberant
Southern nature would have been quick to pity,
eager to console, if it were only by offering to
retrim a hat, or devise something new in hair-
dressing. Lady Mary felt that those secrets of
the night season, the sorrow with which proximity
had made her acquainted, were not to be told ta
the first comer. Something she felt she must do;
and one sultry breathless day, when the maid had-
gone to her dinner. Lady Mary knocked gently at
the door of the next cabin.

A fretful voice answered quickly, "Come in,"
and then, as the fine, matronly figure, the hand-
some face and silver hair, appeared in the doorway,
"I thought it was the stewardess," continued the
voice, rather more fretfully. "You've come into the
wrong cabin."

The girl was sitting on her sofa-berth — wrapped

DEAD L0\^ HAS CHAINS. t^

in a loose white dressing-gown, her hair coiled in
a great careless knot on the top of her head, her
bare feet in red slippers without heels. Lady
Mary's keen vision realised every detail. She looked
slovenly, forlorn, uncared for, out of health, but she
was exquisitely beautiful. Her face shone in the
cramped cabin space, like a light; her form was no
less exquisite. The muslin dressing-gown hanging
loosely over the lawn night-gown revealed every line
of the perfect figure; but, while the matron's eyes
gazed at her in startled admiration, the girl snatched
up a large soft shawl that had fallen on the floor,
and wrapped it hastily round her. ■■'

"No, there is no mistake," Lady Mary said
gently. "I am in the next cabin; and, knowing that
you were quite alone "

"I am not alone. I have my maid."

"Yes, but she is not a companion for you. Veiy
useful, no doubt, but no companion."

"I don't want company. I prefer being alone —
thank you." ... - . " .

1 6 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

There was a pause before the last two words,
and the tone was not over-gracious.

"My dear young lady, I have heard you sob-
bing in the night. I can't help having ears, you
know; and I should like so much to be of use to
you. I thought perhaps I might help you to think
of pleasant things; to put aside your grief, now and
tlienj to take courage, and to face life bravely. No
life is all sorrow."

"It is easy to say that. I daresay you have
been lucky, and have never known what trouble
means. You look like that."

A woman of fifty, as perfectly dressed and
coiffe'e as Lady Mary always was, is apt to give
that impression; and her appearance certainly made
a marked contrast to the girl's slovenly forlorn-
ness.

She had drawn her feet up onto the sofa, and
sat huddled in the big red shawl, making herself
as ungraceful a bundle as she could. But the
lovely head and throat, the perfect shoulders, the
shining copper bronze of her hair, the large hazel

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. tj

eyes, and red sorrowful mouth could not be hidden.
Mary Harling looked at her with a sad reproach-
fulness.

"I have known a great sorrow, a sorrow that
went very near to break my heart," she said
gravely.

"I beg your pardon," the girl said quickly,
and then, looking at her visitor with great angiy
eyes, like a wild beast at bay, she said: "And in
the days of your great sorrow perhaps you didn't
much want to see people — especially strangers."

"That will do," said Lady Mary. "You must
kindly pardon my intrusion, which I sincerely
regret."

She had left the cabin, and shut the door, before
the girl could reply. ' ■ . : '

"I am an officious old fool," she told herself
angrily, as she shut her own cabin door, a little
more sharply than usual.

Three minutes afterwards tliere came an im-
petuous knock on the panel.

"Come in," said Lady Mary.

Dead Luve has Chains. S

1 8 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

The door opened quickly, and the girl appeared,
the red shawl skewered round her with a gold
safety-pin, and her long white dressing-gown trailing
on the floor.

"I am sorry I was rude," she faltered. "You
meant to be kind to me."

There was a sullen air even in her apology; but
Lady Mary saw the lovely red lips quivering, the
eyes strained as if to keep back tears.

"Sit down," she said kindly, and drew the girl
onto her sofa, and put a down pillow behind her
shoulders. "I did mean to be kind. I wanted
to cheer you, if I could. It must be sad to be
alone on a voyage, or with only a maid. And yours
doesn't seem a pleasant person."

"She's a horror; but I suppose she means well.
She is extremely respectable."

She said the last words with a curious sneering
emphasis that did not escape Lady Mary.

"She has a daughter who is the very pink of
respectability," the girl went on, becoming sud-
denly voluble. "She is 3.1ways talking of herself

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. %^

and her daughter. It is her only idea of conver-
sation. Her daughter passed all the standards
at a Board School, and went into service at seven-
teen. She was perfection as a children's maid in
a great house; and at nineteen she married the
head gardener, and her mistress gave her a wedding
present, and she never did anything wrong in her
life, never, never, never!"

"That kind of conversation must be rather
boring."

"Boring! I turn my face to the wall, and
clench my hands, and wish myself dead. I always
wish that; but I wish a little more intensely when
Wareham is telling me about her daughter."

"My dear girl, you must not say that. We
have to make the best of our lot upon earth, come
what may. You must let me be your friend, wliile
we are on the ship, no matter how our ways are to
be parted afterwards. Have you any nice books
with you? Look at my travelling library — my
favourite poets — and Charles Lamb, and a Dickens,
and a Thackeray or two. At my age old books are

20 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

old friends. Is there anything there you would like
to read?"

The girl's eyes had been roving round the cabin,
where there was a gracious elegance in all the
trivial conveniences and adornments that gave the
key note to the occupant's life. Down cushions
in embroidered muslin covers, with soft silk frills,
Indian coverlet and portiere of exquisite needle-
work, writing-cases, work-basket, delicately bound
books, everything choice and graceful and pretty,
the belongings of a woman into whose hfe nothing
sordid or ugly, cheap or pretentious, had ever
entered. And Lady Mary herself in her soft silk,
middle-aged gown, with an old Mechlin lace fichu,
fastened neatly with one large turquoise, was in
perfect harmony with her surroundings. Every-
thing had the same air of calm superiority; and
everything jarred upon the girl's over-strung nerves.

"I see you have 'Jane Eyre,'" she said, after a
pause. "I should like to read that again."

Lady Mary took the volume out of the row of
books in the shelf over her berth. It was bound in

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 21

dark green morocco, with a good deal of gold work,
and inlaid with scarlet calf.

"I made her as fine as I could, because I am so
fond of her," she said, as she put the book in the
girl's hand. ■ ..- .

The girl turned the leaves, looking at the pages
dreamily, and gave a long heart-broken sigh.

"How happy I was when I read this book," she
said presently, "and yet I thought I was miserable.
It was at school, and novels were contraband. That
made us fonder of them. One of the housemaids
used to get them for us — from the grocer, bright red
cloth books, printed on cheap paper. 'Jane Eyre'
was the gem."

"Was it a happy school?"

"Oh, pretty well, as schools go, I believe. It was
an expensive school. There were only twenty girls,
and we had a fine garden — tennis court — croquet
ground, and we dined late, and had to wear low
frocks for dinner. There was a great deal of fuss;
but I think most of the girls liked it. I didn't."

Lady Mary was on the point of asking the

22 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

whereabouts of the school, but checked herself.
She wanted to obtain this girl's confidence, because
it seemed to her that the girl had sore need of a
friend; and the best way to win her from her
sullen reserve was to refrain from asking a single
question.

"I'll take care of your lovely book," the girl
said, rising to go, and then, as she neared the door,
"Perhaps you don't know even my name," she said.
"It is Brown — Jane Brown."

Lady Mary did not try to detain her. She
wanted the girl to get accustomed to the idea of a
friendly neighbour.

"Pray come in and see me sometimes when you
are bored," she said. "I generally stay in my cabin
between lunch and tea. Or would you not like to
come on deck with me some fine morning? I'm sure
the air would be good for you."

"Thanks, no. I hate the deck. And I feel too
ill to dress properly. But if I may come here, once
in a way, when I want to hear a human voice that
is not Wareham's "

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. t^

"Pray, come. I shall be very glad to see you.
I am generally alone at this time. My young cousin
enjoys herself so much all the morning that she
wants a long siesta." . . • '

"I hear her laughing," said Miss Brown. "She
must be a very cheerful person."

"She has a very happy disposition."

Miss Brown knocked at the cabin door at the
same hour next day. She was dressed quite neatly
in a blue muslin morning-gown, and her hair was
tidier — those masses of copper-brown hair, which
Lady Mary admired. She brought back "Jane Eyre,"
wrapped in tissue paper.

"You must read very quickly," said Lady Mary;
"but perhaps you have only skimmed the book at a
second reading."

"No, I read every word. It took me out of my-
self. I was Jane Eyre — and not Jane Brown. Her
troubles were my troubles. I don't think she had so
bad a time after all."

"What, not when she ran away from the man

24 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

who worshipped her — not when she was starving on
the moor?"

"She must have been proud of herself all the
time, because she was worshipped by that stern
strong man, and because she had fought the battle
and won, and had never lost her self-respect. I
don't think starving on the moor mattered. She
knew he loved her. She knew she had done a great
thing in leaving him. I believe she was always
happy — always — after she knew that Rochester loved
her."

She dashed some tears from her eyes with an
angry movement of her hand, a lovely hand, per-
fectly moulded, only a shade too white for the beauty
of youth and health.

Mary Harling was glad to hear her talk. There
had been no sobs or moaning heard in the night,
and no doubt the girl had read all night, or had
read herself to sleep. Anything was better than an
incessant brooding on her own sorrows, whatever
those might be.

She sat on the cabin sofa nearly an hour

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. ^'5

watching Lady Mary at work upon one of her
poplars, the taper fingers drawing the silken thread
in and out, the hand now above, now below the
frame. It seemed a work of ages. ■

"Your trees don't grow as fast as the poplars out
of doors," the girl said. .-

"No, it is slow work. Penelope might have tired
out her suitors without the nightly task of unpick-
ing."

There were lapses of silence, with only the faint
rustle of Lady Mary's silken sleeve as her hand
moved to and fro.

Presently, after a little speech about indifferent
things, Lady Mary ventured a question.

"I hope you are going home to relations you
love?"

"I am going to a woman I never saw, though she
is my father's sister."

"And you are going to live with her till your
people come home?"

"Yes, I suppose so. I have only my father.

26 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

and he will not leave India for the next three
years."

"I hope your aunt is a nice, kind person, and
that her surroundings will be all that you like."

"I don't care much for surroundings. She must
live in a house with walls and a roof, and there will
be air to breathe, and food to eat, and a bed to lie
upon."

"I am sorry to hear you talk in that despondent
strain," Lady Mary said, very gently. "You are so
young, and, forgive me for saying, so lovely, that it
is cruel to think you can be without hope."'

"It is true all the same, I have nothing to hope
for," and then, after a pause: "and everything to
dread."

She clasped her hands before her face, struggling
with her sobs, then rose quickly, and went to the
door.

"I am going back to my cabin," she said; "it
always hurts me to talk of myself."

Lady Mary put her arms round her, and kissed
her reluctant cheek.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. ^^

"Then I will never speak of your own affairs
again," she said. "You shall have all my sympathy,
without a single question. Forgive me if I stirred
the waters of Marah."

"They need no stirring. They drown my heart
day and night." , ■

"Come to me again to-morrow; and we will talk
of only pleasant things. And you must choose an-
other book before you go."

"Thank you." The girl surveyed the shelf slowly,
then put up her hand and drew out a slim volume
half bound in gilded vellum.

"'The Scarlet Letter!'" exclaimed Lady Mary.
"Oh, that is such a painful story!"

"Please let me read it. My father took it away
from me a year ago, when I was not half through it,
for fear I should learn things a girl ought not to
know. Is that your idea of girls? That they ought
to know nothing of the sorrow and shame that some
women have to suffer. Some who are no older than
themselves?"

"It is a difficult problem. I have no daughter,

28 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

SO I have not had to answer the question. Take
Hawthorne's book, if you like. It is exquisitely
written; but I'm afraid it will make you sad."

Lady Mary woke in the dead of the night, at the
sound of stifled sobs in the next cabin.

The "Scarlet Letter" was not an effectual
anodyne.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS, 29

CHAPTER II.

The Electra was nearing Brindisi, and a great
many passengers were prepared to leave her;
cabin trunks, handbags, books, umbrella cases,
and frivolities of all kinds were packed and ready
for unshipping, maids and valets were busy, and on
the alert for the work of landing.

Lady Mary was going home in a leisurely way,
meaning to break the journey and loiter at any place
she cared for, at Venice, at Verona, on the Italian
Lakes, with perhaps a week in Paris, to order
gowns and hats, and look about her in a general
way. She had friends among the haute noblesse, in
solemn houses, in grey dull streets in the old St.
Germain faubourg, set back from the traffic of the
stony street, beyond the echoes of stony court-
yards made more melancholy by funereal ever-
greens in great green tubs, houses with double

30- DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

flights of marble stairs, and a glass canopy over the
door. Lady Mary was a welcome visitor in many
such houses, and had the history of their owners
engraved upon her capacious brain, with all the
relationships, to the furthest cousin, set down as
in a funeral letter. She had known the Orleans
Princes and their belongings, at Twickenham and
Ham, and Bushey Park, and Stowe; and she loved
to talk of them. A week in Paris was a treat
that she always gave herself after a winter in distant
places.

Jane Brown was to stay with the ship to the
bitter end.

"I wish you were coming with my cousin and
me," said Lady Mary, who had grown fond of the
girl, or as fond as Jane Brown would allow her
to be.

Jane had come to her cabin eveiy afternoon,
staying a shorter or longer time as the spirit moved
her. Conversation often flagged, for the girl's
reticence made it difficult, and Jane would sit
in silence with a joyless face, watching Lady Mary's

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 31-

needle, almost as if it were a penitential task so
to watch, a kind of intellectual crank, exercising her
mind upon useless labour.

She was always the same, and in those many
days of friendly intercourse Mary Harling felt
that she had got no nearer to the suffering soul
behind that melancholy outward form. She knew
that the soul was steeped in sadness; but she knew
nothing of the cause. Her guesses were painful; for
such persistent gloom in so young a creature must
needs have a bitter root.

The girl had obstinately refused to be intro-
duced to Daisy Meredith.

"She is a good deal older than you, but she
would be more in sympathy with you than I can be,"
Lady Mary urged. "She is still a girl, very young
for her age, and so bright and cheerful. She would
do you good."

"Please don't ask me, I like to sit here with
you for a little while every day. Your kindness
has let a ray of light into my life. You — you
are such a lady; you are so strong. But I could

32 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

not talk to a girl. My life will never be like a
girl's life again. We should not have a thought in
common."

Mary Harling brooded over that strange sentence.
"My life will never be like a girl's life again."

From a girl who did not look nineteen such
a speech argued utter ruin. Never again. It
argued the irrevocable, the mischance that had
changed the cup of girlhood from sweet to bitter.
A broken vow, a trust betrayed, a young life
spoilt.

It was between ten and eleven o'clock, on the
night before they came to Brindisi. Lady Mary
had dismissed cousin and maid, and was sitting
in her dressing-gown, reading one of those de-
votional books, with which, or with a chapter
or two of Holy Writ, she was wont to soothe her
spirits before she tried to sleep. To-night she had
chosen a sermon of Frederick Robertson's, whose
discourses never wearied her, though she knew them
almost as well as the Psalms. He was her preacher of
preachers, the wisest, the most delicate in apprehension,

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 3,3

the most generous in love and pity for his brother
man. .;,.'.

There came a hght knocking at the cabin door.
She knew the hand, for it ahvays seemed as if she
could hear it flutter as it knocked, shrinkingly, timidly.

She went quickly to open the door.

"Come in, come in, my dear girl. I had bolted
myself in for the night; but I am very glad to
see you. Our last night together! Sit down and
let us have our last talk. The Captain says we
can land directly after breakfast. I shall be at
Danielli's to-morrow night. I wish you were coming
with us."

.. "How happy you look," said the girl, con-
templating her with a kind of fearful wonder, "how
serene, and how strong! I mean how strong in
courage and resolution."

"And yet I have had to bear sorrow that might
break any woman's heart. I used to think my heart
was broken."

"Was it something very dreadful? The death of
someone you loved?"

Dead Love has Chains. 3

34 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"No, thank God, it was not death. But it was
only less dreadful than death. But I don't want
to talk of that. You have never told me your
trouble, and I won't tell you mine. Only I want
you to know that though I seem a frivolous over-
prosperous woman I have gone through the valley
of the shadow, and the shadow has been round and
about me for six years of my life."

"Ah, but you can hope. You may come back
into the sunshine some day."

After this there was a silence. The girl sat
huddled in a corner of the sofa, her clasped hands
resting on her knees. Lady Mary noted the strain-
ing of the small hands, the thin pale fingers inter-
woven.

"You can keep yourself alive with hope," she
said, after a long pause; and then she burst into
tears, suddenly, her forehead bowed upon the
clenched hands, her form shaken by convulsive
sobbing.

There came a sharp knock at the cabin door,
and the maid's harsh voice. '

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. ^$

"You had better come to bed, miss. It is past
eleven, and you oughtn't to be out of your own
cabin." . •

Lady Mary opened the door and faced the
intruder.

"Your young lady is going to stay with me a
little longer. I will see that she goes back to her
cabin in good time."

The tone of authority subdued the sour-faced
person.

"It is very late for Miss Brown to be out of
her cabin," she said sullenly, and sullenly with-
drew.

Mary Harling seated herself by the sobbing girl,
and tried to raise her drooping head.

"Let me comfort you, if I can," she said.
"Won't you tell me your trouble? I might advise;
I might help you even. I could at least do more
than that disagreeable maid of yours. Don't be
afraid to confide in me — even if it is something
very sad — something that makes you ashamed."

The last few words were whispered, as Lady

3*

36 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Mary drew the girl's head to her bosom, and gently
smoothed the disordered hair, with a motherly hand,
the hand that had caressed her boy's handsome
head when he came to her flushed with a day's
sport, on the cricket ground, or in the hunt-
ing field; a hand that had not forgotten the
maternal touch.

"I want to tell you! I must tell you: now that
you are leaving the ship, now that we shall never
meet again. Will you promise never to repeat what I
tell you — never to speak of me to any living creature?"

"Yes, I promise. Nothing you tell me to-night
shall ever be repeated by me, without your distinct
permission."

"Then I will trust you. I came here because I
felt that I must tell you. My heart was bursting.
But you \vill despise me — you will loathe me, when
you know."

She struck her hand fiercely on the loose muslin
that was folded over her breast.

"The Scarlet Letter," she cried, "the Scarlet
Letter ought to be there."

DEAD LOV'E HAS CHAINS. 37

The story was told in that speech.

"My poor, poor, unhappy girl!"

Lady Mary took her in her motherly arms and
wept over her, with more emotion than she had
felt for anyone not of her own kin. She had
suspected some evil thing from the beginning,
for the girl's trouble expressed itself in a way that
could mean no common trouble. The solitary
voyage, the stern -faced attendant, every detail,
hinted at a ruined life, a young life destroyed in
its bloom, a bud blighted and cankered before it
could become a rose. And the desolate creature
was so lovely, gifted with beauty that in happy
surroundings, in the sunlight of good luck, might
have made her one of society's queens. Whatever
her fault had been, however deep her fall, Mary
Harling's heart bled for her, as she felt the young
bosom heaving with convulsive sobs, and the strained
grip of the slender hands that clung to her arm.

"We shall never meet again," the girl said,
"and I want you to know what an unhappy wretch
I am." She went on breathlessly, in short sentences,

38 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

punctuated by sobs. "I only left school in England
a year and a half ago. I went to my father
and mother in India. I had not seen my father
since I was a child. I hardly remembered him,
except that he didn't care much for me, and that
he was often angry about trifles. But my mother
and I had been parted only two years, and I
adored her. I was her only child. There had
been another, a son, but he died before he was
a year old. We adored each other. There never
was such a mother. I flew into her arms when
she came to meet me, and I saw death in her
face. That was my first sorrow. She only lived
four months after I landed, lived and suffered.
When she died I was alone in the world, for I
knew my father did not care for me. He had
another person to think about; someone he had no
right to care for. Before the hot weather began he
sent me to Cashmere, with one of his nieces, a
Colonel's wife, who was gay and bright and kind
and easy-going, as everybody was in Cashmere.
My father went with his friends to Simla."

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 3g

There was a pause, the girl struggled with her
sobs, and Lady Mary waited patiently,

"If you promise never, never, never to repeat
what I tell you, I can trust you, can't I?"

"I have never broken a promise."

"After my mother died I used to lie awake half
the night longing for her, and thinking that there
was no one in the world who loved me. And for
the rest of the night I used to dream that she was
still alive, and that we were happy. When I woke
from that dream — it was almost the same every
night — I used to wish that I was dead. But after-
wards in Cashmere I knew that there was another
kind of love, a love that dazzled me, a love that
wrapped me round like fire. I was happy, happy,
happier than words can tell."

She clung to Lady Mary, she buried her face
upon the matron's ample shoulder, and for the
first time that good Christian felt a touch of re-
pulsion.

"I don't know why I loved him; but his in-
fluence changed my life, almost from the day we

40- DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

first met. He was handsome, fearless of man or
beast, strong-willed, impetuous. He gave me no
peace till he had made me love him. He took
possession of my soul, and made himself my
master, and it seemed sweet to obey him, to know
that he was always thinking about me, and watch-
ing, and following me. We were always together.
My cousin encouraged him. People said he was
rich. He was a great match, she told me, and I
was a very lucky girl to have caught him. Vulgar,
wasn't it?"

"Hideously vulgar," said Lady Mary.

"Well, we were often together, and alone. My
cousin had her own pleasures, and was always
busy, so she let me do what I liked. We went for
long forest rides. We climbed lonely hills. One
evening at sunset, when we had lost our way, he
repeated some verses of Byron's — a scene on a
Greek Island — Haidee and Juan, and after that
he used to call me Haidee, whenever we were
alone. Then one day my cousin made a fuss,
and told him people were beginning to say ill-

DEAD LOVE HAS CILAINS. 4 1

natured things about us; and he must either declare
himself, or must go away and never see me again.
He said he must go, if she thought fit, for he was
not free to marry. He had thought of me only as
a romantic child, and had never imagined that any
scandal could come of his liking for me. A year
ago when he was in America he had engaged him-
self to a Boston girl, an heiress. Her money was of
no consequence to him, for he was an only son,
and would be well-off by- and-by; but he was bound
to the young lady at Boston. My cousin told me
this, and I listened to her without a word; and she
never knew that I was a lost creature, scorched,
seared, consumed by the fire of that dreadful love.
Think what it was, to have loved as Haidee loved,
never to have doubted that I was to be his wife,
that I was to belong to him for ever, and then to
hear that we must part."

"He was an insufferable villain," said Lady
Mary, with clenched teeth.

"Oh, I suppose other men are as cruel, when
girls are fools. Oh, the shame of it, the shame,"

42 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

with 9, sudden rush of scalding tears, "the agony
of knowing that I was an outcast for the rest of my
Ufe."

"Did you never see him again?"

"Once. He made his way to me at night. He
cried over me. He threw himself upon the ground,
and cursed himself, and beat his head upon the
floor. He told me that he would have made any
sacrifice to have me for his wife, if he had not.
been bound in honour to another girl, a girl who
would die if he jilted her. I think he was sorry —
but he said I was so young, and I would forget him,
and make a good match, and perhaps be a great
lady."

"He did not know "

"What you know," whispered the girl, with her
face hidden. "No, he never knew that. He left
Cashmere after that night."

"And you have never written to him?"

"Never."

"But others had to know."

"Wareham told my father. He never spoke

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 43

like a father to me after that. He arranged for me
to go to his sister in Ireland. I am to stay with
her till he comes to fetch me. It may be two years,
tliree years, five, six, seven years."

"Poor child, poor child."

Lady Mary found herself wanting in words of
consolation. To a woman of mature years, with
whom chastity was a habit of the mind, such a
fall as this, the fall of a well-born, well-bred girl,
was inconceivable. She could better understand
the outcast of the streets, the village beauty, be-
trayed and abandoned, flung into a gulf as black
as hell. She was not without pity; but she was
without understanding. She wanted to speak words
of healing and comfort, but the words would not
come. She could only think of the disgraceful-
ness, the shamefulness of the story. A girl, educated
at a respectable English school, a girl whose heart
was still bleeding from the loss of a good mother,
a girl in the freshness of youth, to whom the
faintest touch of impurity should be horrible, for
such an one to fling herself into the arms of her first

44 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

lover, consumed by the fire of lawless love! It was
unthinkable.

"How old are you?" she asked, almost sternly.

"I shall be eighteen in April."

"Your cousin was as wicked as your seducer: to
take no more care of a girl of seventeen."

The girl started to her feet, releasing herself
from Lady Mary's surrounding arms.

"You are disgusted with me," she said shortly.
"I was a fool to tell you. And some day, if chance
should bring us together again, you will point me
out to your friends as a disreputable creature, unfit
to mix with decent people."

"I have given you my promise."

Lady Mary was of that modern Anglican Church
which loves the things that belong to the old Faith.
An ivory crucifix hung over her berth. The girl
had often looked at it, with dreary eyes, finding
no comfort in the thought of a Redeemer. She
looked at it now with a sudden purpose, snatched
it from the hook where it hung, and put it into
Lady Mary's hands.

DEAD LOVE HAS CEIAINS. 45

"Swear," she said, "upon this cross, that you
will never give me away."

The slang phrase was repellant at such a mo-
ment, and Lady Mary answered stiffly:

"I have promised," she said, "that is enough."

"No, no, no, it is not enough. I hate myself
for having babbled to you. I shouldn't have done
it if I were not distracted. I must have your oath.
I know you are a religious woman, and if you
swear upon that crucifix, you will not break your
word."

Mary Harling lifted the sacred symbol to her lips.

"I swear never to repeat what you have told
me," she said, in a low grave voice, and then, put-
ting her arm round the girl, and making her sit
down beside her, she said gently:

"You have been very hardly used — yet you
have, I fear, yourself to blame in some part, for
the trouble that has come upon your young life
— but your Saviour will accept your atonement
of shame and sorrow. He has pardoned you,
as He pardoned the nameless woman who had

46 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

sinned, and saved her from the Pharisees* fierce
law. You are very young — and after some quiet
years in Ireland, years in which you must cultivate
your mind, and try to do all the good that you
possibly can to the people about you — the poor
people and children that you may find there, and
whom you can help and teach — after those years,
which you can make years of atonement, you
may begin a new life, you may feel yourself a new
woman, cleansed and purified by sorrow and good
works."

And then Lady Mary repeated a sentence in the
sermon she had been reading when Jane Brown came
to her door, which had come back to her mind
while she sat dumb and unsympathetic.

"'Forget mistakes; organise victory out of misr
takes!' That is what the noblest preacher I know
of told sinners. But in that happier time which
you must hope for, if a good man should give
you his love, and ask you to be his wife, don't cheat
him. Tell him all your sorrowful past. Don't shirk
the shame of it. If he really loves you he will

.DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS, 47

forgive and take you to his heart. Don't palter with
the truth. Bear your burden; and be sure that truth
is best."

"I shall never marry. I would rather go down
to my grave alone than bear the shame of such a
confession. I have told you. I could not tell a
man : least of all a man I loved. I shall never marry
— unless "

"Unless "

"Unless I were to meet him — free to make me
his wife." :.' .■ :>

She was weeping quietly, subdued, and perhaps
a shade more hopeful. Presently she flung her arms
round Mary Harling's neck.

"Will you let me kiss you?" she pleaded. "Now
that you know what I am." '•

Lady Mary kissed her warmly. ' ;■

"Good-bye, my dear. Some day, perhaps, when
your life is happier, you ^vill \vrite and tell me.
I shall be very glad to know that all is well with
you."

"No, no, don't waste a thought upon the

4S DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

wretched girl whose crying broke your night's
rest. You have been very kind to me, and I am
not ungrateful. Or, sometimes, perhaps, when
you open Hawthorne's story, think of me for a mo-
ment."

"I shall often think of you; and I want to
hear from you, years hence, when you have lived
down your sorrow. But, oh, my poor girl," Lady
Mary went on, in a lower voice, "if a living child is
born to you, don't withhold your love; don't try to
put the innocent creature from you. Try, as much
as your surroundings will suffer you, to be a good
mother."

The girl answered only with a hand-clasp.

"Good-bye," she sobbed, and in the next in-
stant the cabin door was closed, and she had vanished
out of Mary Harling's life; or so Mary Harling
thought.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 49

CHAPTER m.

Lady Mary had made for herself a dignified
position in the most respectable section of English
society, the people whose country houses were built
on land that their ancestors had won from royal
fear or favour before the Wars of the Roses, and
whose town houses had laid down red cloth for
Frederick Prince of Wales, when Newcastle was
Premier, serious old houses in sober old streets, where
the iron extinguishers that flank the doorstep tell of
lovely Devonshire's sedan chair and running footmen,
of the Gunnings and the Walpoles. Lady Mary's
friends were the kind of people who do not worship
new money, or apologise for going to the entertain-
ments of Mammon "for the sake of the music," or
gobble June peaches while they ridicule the providers
of the feast.

Lady Mary's was a quiet world, in which people

Dead Love has Chains. 4

5P. DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

set a tremendous value upon themselves, exaggerated
no doubt, but still a kind of self-respect that kept
them out of unclean paths. Lady Mary's friends
wanted to know a great deal about everybody who
crossed their sacred thresholds, or whose thresholds
they crossed. "Who was she?" "What has he
done?" "Where do they come from?"

The splendid house, the sumptuous feasting, the
costly music counted for nothing.

"No doubt they are very nice; but we don't want
to know them."

That was the attitude of Lady Mary's friends to
the newly rich, and newly popular.

Writers, politicians, actors, and artists of all
kinds were admitted on their merits, and while they
were observed to behave themselves properly; but
for the bad-mannered man, the bounder or the cad,
there was short shrift. Invited once, he was never
asked again. Unless he were well-born, and then
bad manners were described as eccentricity. The
scions of great houses could not do wrong.

Lady Mary had married a great shipbuilder. It

PEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS, 5 I

was a low marriage, of course, but had been
tolerated on the ground of the man's unobtrusive
manners, and a certain grave dignity that might
have become a duke. His father had been rich
before him, and the son had been reared among
the sah of the earth, at Eton and Oxford. Lady
Mary was a duke's daughter, and had brought her
mate ten thousand pounds for tout potage , which
was not a Uberal portion considering the Duke's
wealth. John Harling could afford to brush aside
the ducal dower as a negligible quantity, when he
dictated his marriage settlement. He gave his wife
a thousand a year for pin money, and when a
mortal disease came upon him, eleven years after
his marriage, he left her fifteen thousand a year
during widowhood, to be reduced to five thousand
if she married, and to five hundred if she married a
man ten years younger than herself. She was only
thirty when he made his will, with certain death
near at hand, and he wanted to guard her from the
evil to come. He told himself that while her boy
was young, her plaything and her idol, she would

4*

gJS DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

not want to marry; but that later, in her mature
years, she might be a mark for the impecunious
guardsman or the foreign adventurer.

Lady Mary's portion came from funded pro-
perty; but her son inherited his father's interest
in the great shipbuilding firm, which had been
made into a Limited Liability Company. With
the accumulations of a long minority, and the in-
creasing prosperity of the business, Conrad would
have not less than thirty thousand a year when he
came of age; but before his twenty-first birthday
Conrad Harling had been condemned to imprison-
ment for life, and his fortune remained in the
custody of his trustees, who were men of position and
impeccable honesty.

It was the worst kind of imprisonment, the most
hopeless, the most melancholy. Mental specialists,
grave gentlemen from Harley Street and SavUe Row,
had sat in judgment upon him, and had given their
gloomy verdict. For life! They could see no pro-
spect of cure. It was one of those cases of loss of
memory which are of all phases of mental derange-

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 53

ment the most hopeless. It was not that something
had gone mysteriously wrong with the mental
machinery, something that might come mysteriously
right. The machine was broken. The main spring
of intelligence had snapped. The man remained a
magnificent man — a picture or a statue of splendid
manhood; but the mind was cancelled.

Doctors from Paris, doctors from Berlin and
Vienna, agreed with Harley Street and Savile
Row.

Conrad Harhng — he who had been so much
more alive than the ruck of men — was practically
dead. He paced the leafy avenues of a park at
Roehampton, with a keeper at his side, though there
was no need of a keeper, for the house-surgeon's
report described the young man as "harmless."

Harmless! He, to be so described, who at
twenty had been like Absalom in his beauty — like
Hamlet in his distinction, "the observed of all
observ'ers, the glass of fashion and the mould of
form." He who had been a star at Eton and
Christchurch, admired, followed, imitated, beloved.

54 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

an easy first in those accomplishments that youth
worships, in one word an Oxford Blue, stroke of
the Christchurch eight, captain of the Christchurch
eleven.

On the scholastic side he had not done wonders;
but everybody knew that he was clever, and at
twenty much might be hoped from him.

He was his mother's idol. She lived only to
worship him, and to maintain the dignity, the
reserve, the aloofness from all unworthy people and
paltry things, incumbent upon Conrad's mother.
She thought of herself almost as if she had been a
Queen Regent, and regulated every act of her life
by Conrad's interests. She looked forward to his
coming of age as if it were to revolutionise the
world, or at least to begin a new chapter in Eng-
lish history. With his means, with his gifts, his
splendid presence, his happy self-assurance and
spontaneous eloquence, to what heights of statesman-
ship and parliamentary renown might he not aspire?
She smiled when his college tutor told her that he
was irregular at lectures, and had very little gout

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 55

for Aristotle — or Greek tragedy. What did it matter
to a Heaven-born orator, who would take the House
by storm, and recall the splendid flights of that
famous Charles Townshend described by Walpole,
without Townshend's failings?

He would come of age in a year. She had
begun to make plans, and to discuss the festivities,
the banquets and benefactions, the rural sports and
wide-stretching hospitalities, that were to make
his twenty-first birthday memorable all over the
county. She talked of nothing else to her bailiff
and house-steward, in her summer visit to Cran-
ford.

"It is my son's house," she reminded them. "I
only occupy it by his courtesy, and when he marries
I shall move to the Grange."

The Grange was on the other side of the Park,
and its gardens skirted the churchyard. It was
Tudor and picturesque, and handsomer than the
average dower house; but Lady Mary felt as if
she would be laying down crown and sceptre when
she left the great Georgian mansion and the family

56 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

portraits. She was full of brilliant ideas for the
coming-of-age festivities — Conrad's birthday was in
August, the month of golden grain and scarlet
poppies, and orchards brimming over with red and
amber fruit, the month of fertility and rich colour,
gaudy flowers, and crimson sunsets. Lady Mary
would have everything early English, a reminiscence
of Frith's picture, "Coming of age in ye olden
time."

Her pet idea was a Maypole dance on the
village green, which was lovely and unspoilt by
cockney influences. And the Maypole might be left
standing, and the young people encouraged to dance
on summer evenings. She had reformed the village
Inn, which had thriven upon the new system, and
was a favourite shelter for cyclists and pedestrians,
who were sure of crisp loaves and succulent cheese,
well-brewed tea and home-made jam, at the "Har-
ling Arms." Everything in Lady Mary's dominion
made for prettiness; and her tenants and trades-
people, and farm-labourers, had prospered exceed-
ingly during her gracious Regency. Nor was there

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 57

any fear of evil times when the King began his
reign. Benevolence and kindness would be the
order of the day, sustained by an ever-increasing
income from the famous Company in which Conrad
was the largest shareholder, with no more arduous
duty than to sit as Chairman at a half-yearly meet-
ing, and draw his half-yearly dividends.

And then, perhaps, a few years after that
joyous festival, would come marriage, and another
ringing of bells and broaching of hogsheads. Lady
Mary did not wish her son to marry till he was at
least four -and -twenty. She would indeed have
chosen twenty-six or twenty-seven as the marrying
age, when he had seen the world, and had been in
Parliament for two or three years. She wanted
him to be free from all domestic cares in the begin-
ning of his political career. Twenty-seven would
be best. She knew of half a dozen lovely girls, now
in the nursery or schoolroom, girls born exactly
as she would wish her daughter-in-law to be bom,
in surroundings of unblemished respectability, forti-
fied by blue blood. For Lady Mary's son blue

58 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

blood was indispensable, although she had descended
from her patrician perch in marrying that excellent
man, his father.

Having married Mr. Harling she meant that the
Harling money should secure a patrician wife for
Mr. Harling's son. The girls were growing up for
him. He, who was so handsome and attractive, so
superlatively gifted in the accomplishments girls ad-
mire, cricket, tennis, horsemanship, dancing, would
have his choice among half a dozen beauties in
their first season. His mother meant to give him
a free hand. She would never dictate, she would
not even suggest; but she would lead him through
gardens of fresh-blown roses, and let his eye and
his heart choose the flower that was to be the crown
of his young life.

And while she was dreaming of her son's mar-
riage in his twenty-sixth year, Conrad Harling was
going mad for love of an innkeeper's daughter, and
had turned socialist in his desire to level himself
down to her. He was a romantic young man, full
of high-flown sentiments and wild Quixotism; and

PEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 59

he took up Karl Marx with an enthusiasm he had
refused to Aristotle. He gave vent to repubUcan
views in red-hot speeches at the Union, reviled rank
and state, and raved about the equal rights of men;
and he was firmly resolved upon marrying Stella
Meadows, whose father kept the "Otter's Head," a
favourite resort for boating men. - •

Within a week of the long vacation, he surprised
and disappointed his mother by announcing that
he meant to stay at Abingdon and read, and do a
good deal of rowing, so as to get himself in good
form for next year, when there was every chance of
his being in the 'Varsity eight. He would go to her
for a day or two now and then, if she was at Cran-
ford, or would meet her in London, if she had any
occasion to go there.

Lady Mary was sorry; but after all it was im-
portant that he should prepare to face the examiners,
and if he could do better by himself in quiet river-
side lodgings than touring in Wales or Scotland with
a reading party, his mother could have no objection.
She did not expect to enjoy much of his society in

60 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

the "Long." It was happiness enough to see him
occasionally, in high health and spirits, to accompany
him on a round of inspection on the estate, and to
find him pleased with all she had done, intensely
interested in the stables and his stud of hunters, in
the kennels where his shooting dogs threatened to
repeat the tragedy of Actaeon out of exuberant love,
in Lady Mary's herd of Jerseys, and even in so tame
a thing — from the masculine standpoint — as the
gardens that were his mother's pride and joy.

But this year all was changed. He came. He
was kind, and interested in her health, and went
with her wherever she asked him, stables, farmyard,
kennels, gardens : but it was too clear that all savour
had gone out of these familiar things. He would
not even have the cloths taken off his horses when
they were brought out into the ancient quadrangle.

"That'll do. Brand," he told the stud-groom,
"they look in fine condition."

He gave his adoring setters and spaniels hardly
three minutes, and left them disappointed, with
great brown eyes looking at him reproachfully, as he

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 6 I

backed out of the old half-timbered building, where
they lived in the broken light from a window in the
roof, through which the sunshine came fitfully be-
tween the dusk of massive oak rafters.

"Juno looked miserable when you wouldn't
notice her," his mother said, as they left the
yard. •'

Conrad was not conscious of the reproach. He
hardly noticed anything, except in an automatic
way that made his mother unhappy. His mind
was not there, ffis thoughts and interests were
miles away. What was amiss? Was it debt? His
allowance was on the top scale of college allowances,
or a little above the highest scale. But the capa-
city of undergraduates for getting into debt is sup-
posed to be without limit, and however much they
have there is always the something more that they
spend.

He had been losing money at cards perhaps;
or he had been backing a friend's horses; and
he was ashamed to tell her. He looked pale and
careworn. Her heart went out to him with infinite

62 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

pity. If it had been possible for him to squander
his fortune in one year of folly, to mortgage every
acre, and sell his patrimony to the Jews, and to
reduce her to beggary, his mother's power to love
and pity would not have been exhausted. She
would have gone out of her ruined home with him,
hand in hand, as Adam and Eve went out of Eden,
disconsolate but not reproachful.

She questioned him gently. She was sure there
was something on his mind, something that worried
him, and had been worrying him for some time.
Would he not trust her? If he had lost money in
some rather foolish way he could draw on her for
any sum he wanted to make things square, mthout
troubling his trustees. She had a good balance at
her bankers.

"You dear old mother," he exclaimed, and
he spoke with more animation than he had shown
hitherto. "No, I have not outrun the constable;
though I did spend more last term than I generally
spend — not betting — no, dear. It went upon trifles,
foolish thinQ[S — but no harm."

DEAD LOVE IL\S CHAINS. 63-

"But I know you have something serious on your
mind, Conrad."

"Oh, a fellow ought to have something to think
of besides the college boat. There is nothing wrong,
nothing that need trouble you when you are on your
knees. But you have hit the mark. I have been
thinking of something serious."

"Not the church?"

"What? Turn parson? No, you dear simpleton.
That's not in my line. Don't be impatient, mother.
There shall be no secrets between you and me. But
you must let me take my own time."

He smiled down at her. His face had grown
suddenly radiant \vith the look she loved. She called
it his noble look, an expression in which she saw
truth and courage and honour, and all good gifts
that well-born youth should have. A light flashed
into her mind.

Conrad was in love; in love before his time,
seven years before the date that hfer sagacious mind
had allotted for his marriage. Some pretty sister of
one of his Oxford friends had caught his youthful

64 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

fancy; perhaps a nobody's pretty sister; a country
vicar's daughter, one of many.

But even if it were so it could but be calf-love,
a boy's first fancy for a lovely face, or a face that
seemed lovely to that ardent young imagination.
Such loves are light as children's soap bubbles,
look as dazzling in their iridescent glory, and melt
and pass like them. She was not going to fret her-
self if her beloved boy had taken first love," like
measles or chicken-pox, a complaint that had to be
got through somehow. Her only regret was that the
youthful malady seemed to have taken a gloomy
form; he was out of spirits, absent-minded, too
evidently worried and perplexed.

Even a mother's solicitude under-estimated the
evil. For a young man of Conrad's impassioned
temperament first love must be disastrous if it be
not happy. With him love began at fever point.
From the hour he made the acquaintance of the
prosperous Innkeeper's petted daughter overdressed,
educated up to the highest all-round smattering
point, kept aloof from the bar and its vulgarities,

DEAD LOV^E HAS CHAINS. 65

chaperoned by a spinster aunt who never snubbed
an ehgible undergraduate, but rather contrived those
casual introductions that can be brought about so
easily on the river, where there is always some kind
of excitement and something of a festal air. And
one undergraduate having somehow introduced him-
self to aunt and niece, was able to introduce others,
till the heiress of the "Otter's Head" had her follow-
ing of nice boys, and was established as an ac-
knowledged beauty. . ' • ■ ' • .
She was very pretty, in the first freshness of
girlhood. She had that exquisite purity of colour-
ing, a fairness as of Madonna lilies, from which the
idea of virginal innocence seems inseparable. The
sensitive complexion, with its quick blushes, the
lucid blue of the large wondering eyes, shining
through golden lashes, the flaxen hair, all had an
angelic character which was so out of harmony
with coquetry and slyness that no experience
of her cruelty or her want of truth could shake
the lad's faith, or startle him from his dream of
bliss.

Dead Love has Chains. 5

66 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS,

He had known her something less than half a
year, and he had been made to suffer every pang
which sHghted love can feel, every joy that love
triumphant can taste. Her smiles and kisses, her
frowns and coldness, the moonlit nights when she
would stroll with him in dewy lanes amid the subtle
scent of hedgerow flowers, and fields of blossoming
beans, his arm enfolding her slight form, his eyes
drinking the beauty of her face, angelic in the
magical moonlight.

"My angel, my wife!" he would murmur in those
blissful moments, the heavenly interludes in which he
thought she loved him.

Never for one brief flash had his mind harboured
a thought dishonouring her. That she could ever
be anything less than his wife, the first and most
precious of women, was impossible. She was his
first and last love. A passion that had mastered
heart and mind, a passion that shut out every
other thought, and made existence one long dream
of the woman he loved, such a passion could have
no second.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 67

"It is once and for ever," he said, when she told
him that he would go away and forget her.

He had spent the greater part of his college
allowance on jewels to deck his divinity; but
here that cold commonsense which sometimes
chilled him, as out of harmony with the angelic,
came into play. She would accept the gifts of her
future husband; but she would not wear them
as the daughter of the "Otter's Head." People
would laugh at pearls and diamonds on an inn-
keeper's girl, she told him. She was not elated at
the idea of marrying him; indeed there were times
when she told him their marriage was a foolish
dream, that would never be realised. She was a
creature of moods and fancies, capricious, un-
reasonable; and she kept him under the harrow by
her cold fits and hot fits, her hours of yielding love,
her hours of coldness and restraint.

So determined was he upon having her and only
her to share his fortune and rule his life, that, in
opposition to her wish, he called upon the landlord

'68 .DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

of the "Otter's Head" and made a formal offer of
his hand.

The man received the flattering proposition
gravely, and with something of embarrassment.

"It's a serious thing for a gentleman like you
to think of marrying a publican's daughter," he said,
"and you're very young, sir, to make up your
mind about marriage: hardly of age yet, I take
it."

"I shall be twenty-one next year, and I have
made up my mind."

"And what about Stella? She's a bit of a
flirt, you must know, though I say it as shouldn't.
Are you quite sure of her?"

"Yes. She gave me her promise last night. It
was not the first time: but it was the first time I felt
sure, quite sure that she loves me."

His face was radiant as he remembered those
impassioned vows. All her capricious moods, her
slights, her coldness were forgotten. She had given
him unmistakable tokens of a love fervid as his own.
Her arms had been round his neck, her lovely head

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 6g:

nestling upon his shoulder, and heart had been beat-
ing against heart in passionate unison, while that
fond vow was spoken,

"Your wife, dearest, never any man's wife but
yours, never, never, never!"

And then had come a flood of tears, and stormy
sobs that threatened hysteria; and it had been his
tender care to soothe her shaken nerves, to comfort
her with happy talk about their future.

And now her father, who might naturally be sup-
posed to receive such an offer with gratification, if
not astonishment, discussed the situation with a
troubled brow and perplexed manner.

"Of course it's a great chance for my girl," he
said, hesitatingly, "everybody knows Mr. Harling.
Why, I remember your father, sir, thirty years ago,
when he was at Christchurch — a famous scholar, I
believe."

"Yes, my father took a much better degree than
his son is likely to take."

"Never mind that, sir. He never had your form

70 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

on the river. But to return to my girl. Does your
ma know of your intentions?"

"Not yet. She will know in good time; and I
have no doubt of her approval, when she sees Stella.
She is the kindest of women, and her only wish is
for my happiness."

"You see, sir, it don't often happen for a
gentleman of your wealth and position — your ma
with a handle to her name, I'm told — to marry
a girl out of a pub. I'm afraid her ladyship
might cut up rough, and make it unpleasant for
you."

"I don't want you to trouble yourself about
that," Conrad said, with a touch of hauteur. "I
mean to marry Stella within a week of my coming
of age. That will give time for my mother to know
and appreciate my future wife. You see I am not
going to work in a hot-headed way; but it was only
right that you should be told of your daughter's en-
gagement, and should have no doubt as to the pro-
priety of her conduct when you happen to see her,
or to hear of her, in my company."

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. Jt

The Innkeeper was somewhat moved by this
speech.

"You're a trump, sir," he said. "I wish there
was more like you. And — and you're a great
catch for my girl; and I hope she'll prove worthy
of her luck — but she's very young, and she's been
a bit giddy. You see she's out and away the
prettiest girl between Oxford and Abingdon, and
the undergrads, and — and — others have made a fool
of her. She lost her mother when she was eleven
years old, and I've been too busy to look after her
much. I sent her to the best school I could hear
of — a boarding-school for gentlemen's daughters.
It was a favour to take her, but the school wasn't
doing well, and went bankrupt soon after. She
kicked over the traces a bit at school — couldn't
stand the rules and regulations. And then I
got my maiden sister to come and take care of
her; but my sister's a feather-head. She was
something of a beauty herself in her time, and
was made so much of that she could never
bring herself to accept a husband in her own

72 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

walk of life : and I don't know whether she has
been quite the best sort of person to look aftec
Stella."

"Stella has too much self-respect to want looking
after," Conrad said.

He knew the aunt, and considered her a foolish
person; but he believed in his divinity's intelligence,
as he believed in her purity.

"Now, sir, if you really intend to make Stella
your wife in a twelvemonth from now, I should
like, with all deference, to offer you a bit of advice.
Let me send her away from Oxford, and the river,
and the class of people that hang about my house.
I've kept her out of the business. She never
drew a glass of beer in her life; but there it is,
you may call a public-house an hotel and furnish
your sitting-rooms up to date, but public-house it
is all the same. We must get Stella out of it.
You'll want her made a lady before you marry
her and there's only one way that it can be done,:
as far as I can see. She was eighteen on her last
birthday; so she's not too old for a good finishing-.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. ^J^

scliool, a school where they teach deportment and
such hke. If you'll find out where there is such
a school — Leamington, perhaps — or in the neigh-
bourhood of Reading — an out and out good school,
where the schoolmistress is a real lady, and can be
depended on, I'll send Stella there for a year. I
don't mind what it costs. I want to make a lady of
her, and to get her away from people I don't like.
That's flat!"

He thumped his honest fist upon the table, and
spoke with a determination that startled Conrad. It
was as if a doctor were proposing some heroic treat-
ment in a desperate case.

"I hate the idea of schoolmistresses. They would
make her prim and artificial. They would kill the.
charm of my wild rose." . . "

"You must have her made a lady, sir. She
mustn't stop here."

Conrad argued the point sturdily, but Stella's
father was resolute.

"I know what I'm about," he said. "The 'Otter's
Head' is no place for her. I've been wanting to get

74 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

her away for the last six months ; and now I'll do it
It'll be the — making of her."

He was going to say the saving of her — but
chose the less ominous word.

Conrad had to submit. He told Stella of the
plan, in their evening walk. She was angry with
her father, and contemptuous about his views.
She was angry with her lover for consenting to de-
grade her.

"I suppose you think I am ignorant, that I pro-
nounce words wrong, and am not fit to mix with
genteel people."

He soothed and petted her, told her she w^as
his ideal lady, but she must not talk of people
being "genteel." She had better forget that
there was such a word in the language. There
was nothing derogatory in a finishing school. It
was not his idea, but her father's. For his own
part he would not have her changed in the most
trifling detail. If there were some little differences
between her and the girls he had met elsewhere,

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 75

those slight divergencies only made her more
fascinating.

She listened, and was soothed, and appeared to
agree to her father's plan.

He left her in hot haste to discover the ideal
seminary in which just that last polishing process
might be applied to the lovely statue. Just the
artistic treatment that would embellish without
altering his goddess. He took the first train to
London and went about among the few immaculate
matrons with whom he was on friendly terms, sur-
prising them by his eagerness for information on a
subject that seemed hardly within the range of his

interests.

Three out of five knew nothing of schools, and

shuddered at the notion of anything but home
education for so precious a being as a girl-child.
The other two knew hard cases of Anglo-Indian
children who had to be brought up at school,
and each had her pet establishment, her incom-
parable Misses, who could create the perfection of
girlhood out of the most unpromising material.

76.' DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Two of the incomparable Misses had a hand-
some house and gardens at Eastbourne, "quite away
from the town and the Parade, and all the holiday-
people, don't you know?"

An abode of refined dulness, Conrad imagined,
where a pupil might die of ennui without ever
having run against a vulgar person. The back
windows commanded a distant view of the grounds
of Compton Place. This in itself gave a cachet.

Nobody happened to know of any establishment
at Leamington or Reading.

Conrad tore down to Eastbourne by cab and
train, catching the afternoon express with a rush,
and drove in a fly to Mandeville House, where Miss
Mandeville and Miss AmeHa Mandeville fostered
all that was delectable in girlhood, and eliminated
every weed in their garden of girls.

It was a sunny afternoon, and the plain white
house facing south-west was glorified, every scarlet
stripe in the Spanish blinds a flash of intense
colour, the lawns and geranium beds dazzling. No-
where did he remember to have seen such purple

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS, ']']

clematis, such amber roses, such scarlet cannas.
Everything was steeped in sunlight. It was the kind
of afternoon that raises an English landscape to the
colour-point of Italy.

Girls were playing tennis, their white frocks
flashing in the sun — their joy in the game breaking
into peals of light laughter. Miss Amelia Mande-
Tille took him round the house and the grounds.
Everywhere he found perfection, the desires and the
ways of girls studied with a forethought and sym-
pathy that surprised him. He had supposed that
schoolmistresses considered girlhood their natural
enemy, and took infinite pains to traverse and stifle
girhsh instincts. Here infinite pains had been
taken to realise every wish, and gratify every
natural taste. Beauty was the dominant note.
The spinsters had eyes for form and colour, and
a catholicity of taste in all things beautiful.

The house stood on high ground, half a mile
from the coast, and the sea beheld from afar was
a glorified sea, sapphire and gold against the ver-
:dant middle distance. Everything pleased Conrad.

78 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Surely his dearest girl would be happy there —
for the year of their engagement — only one little
year before she would be mistress of his home,
and all that home implies for a man of large means.
Yes, assuredly she would be happy. The change
from those unworthy surroundings at the "Otter's
Head" would make this place seem paradise.

He remembered that there were details, small
differences, in her forms of speech, that wanted re-
fining away. For him all she said was enchanting;
but the women among whom his wife would have
to live are critical about trifles. They have their
shibboleth; and if they talk bad English it must
be their own kind of bad English. Upon accent
they are to the last degree intolerant; and they
would boycot an angel with a cockney twang. And
there were accents of Stella's that touched the
boundary line of vulgarity, when she was angry
or excited. Conrad began to think highly of his
future father-in-law's wisdom. Of course it must
be his privilege to pay the charges of Mandeville
House, which were on a scale in accordance

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 79

with the luxuries and refinements of the establish-
ment.

He rushed back to Oxford by a night train, too
late to visit his enchantress. He lay awake thinking
of her, picturing her among those happy girls he
had seen on the tennis lawn, the fairest where all
were fair, the most divine.

He went to the "Otter's Head" in the early
morning before breakfast. She was not an early
riser, but perhaps she might feel some of his own
impatience for their meeting, after his absence
of one long day; and she might be curious to hear
his account of the ideal seminary that was to make
her as perfect in speech and manner as she was
exquisite in personal charm.

The Innkeeper met him with a scared white
face.

"I've got some bad news for you, sir," he
said.

He led the young man into his den behind the
bar, the room where he kept his accounts, and
where he sat of an evening, Avith a crony or two,

go DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

or with his solitary pipe, while his daughter and
her aunt were in their drawing-room upstairs,
where they could have their own visitors, aloof from
vulgarity.

"She's gone. She's gone, sir — cut and run — ■
the — the "

His speech closed huskily with a hideous epithet
that was doubly horrible when linked with the
name of his daughter; and then, for the first time
since he entered into his fool's paradise, Conrad
Harling was told what kind of woman he had loved.

"It didn't seem a father's place to give her
away," the Innkeeper said, "but I spoke as plain
as I dared. And I thought that having been lucky
enough to meet with a gentleman of your metal,
willing to make a lady of her, she'd have turned
over a new leaf. I never thought she'd have any-
thing more to do with him."

And then Conrad learnt that he had a rival,
and such a rival ! A prize-fighter, the champion
middle-weight, famous in the sporting world, an
olive-skinned gladiator, with close-cropped hair of

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. Si

raven blackness, a blue chin, a broken nose, and
a drunken ^vife, He had come to Abingdon for
a holiday, while he was out of training, and he had
stayed at the "Otter's Head," the centre of an ad-
miring company, an attraction to the jovial bar, a
profitable guest.

Conrad had seen him sculling in the sunshine,
the muscular arms bare to the shoulder, the supple
form shining like pale bronze.

This was the man she loved, the master she
obeyed, the brute-force that had subjugated her
trivial nature, while the young undergraduate's pas-
sion had only flattered her vanity.

She had left her father's house in the early
morning, and had gone to Liverpool with her rough
lover, on the first stage of their flight to America,
where the pugilist had a profitable engagement.
The drunken wife was left in an Oxford slum, and
Stella's letter, posted on the journey, told her father
what she had made of her life.

She was leaving England, perhaps for ever,
with the only man she had ever loved. They

Dead Love has Chains, 6

82 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

would be married in America, where he could easily
get a divorce, and where he would be a rich man.

Conrad listened in a stony silence. All the
life had gone out of his bloodless face. His eyes
— those splendid blue eyes — had become dull and
expressionless. He stood with Stella's letter in his
hand, staring at the words as if they had no meaning.

"Can I see her aunt?" he asked at last. "She
knows more than you do, perhaps."

"Yes, curse her. She knows more than enough.
She can tell me now that it's too late. They
always do, those women. If ever I had a dishonest
barman they'd tell me about him fast enough when
he was gone. It's a way they have, curse them.
They're a bad lot, sir, every one of 'em, rotten to the
core."

He threw his cloth cap at his favourite bull
terrier, and then mixed a stiff brandy and soda. It
was easy to guess where this bereft father would
look for consolation.

"Have a drink, sir?"

"No. I'll go and see your sister."

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. S^'

He knew his way to the gaudy little upstairs

room, facing the river, the room in which he had

spent many an hour with aunt and niece, a favoured

visitor. The crochet antimacassars and stuffed

trout and pike, the beaded reed blinds and blue

ginger-jars, the mixture of early Victorian and cheap

Japanese had set his teeth on edge, even in

Stella's bewitching company, and he had yearned

to see her in the grave old rooms at Cranford, the

rooms where things of beauty, curios, porcelain,

pictures, hardly counted in the effect of panelled

walls and Adam doors and mantelpieces, and all

the glory of cedar- shadowed la^vns and Italian

garden. He found the elder Miss Meadows with

swollen eyelids, and every sign of tribulation, but

loquacious in her grief She covered herself with

reproaches, and gave him no time to blame her,

had he been disposed to do so. Even amidst her

incoherence he heard only too much, heard how

the sweet simplicity he had adored was the

varnish of an unscrupulous coquette, how she had

"carried on" — that was the aunt's phrase — with

6*

84 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Mr. So-and-So of Balliol, and Lord So-and-So of
Brasenose, how the carryings on had begun when
she was sixteen, and how it was only by reason
of her aunt's prudential measures that worse things
had not happened.

Conrad had to listen while she expatiated upon
Stella's artfulness and let in strange lights iipon the
career of a plebeian beauty. The presents, the
treats, the carrying on! Those arms that had clung
round his neck so tenderly, the dimpled cheek that
had pressed against his own, those exquisite lips
whose fragrance he had drunk, were the hackneyed
charms of a lowbred wanton.

He heard that cataract of vulgar speech in a
strange silence. He looked as he had looked in the
Innkeeper's snuggery, like flesh turned into stone.
Except to ask to see this woman he had hardly
spoken since he came into the house. He made no
comment upon the story she told him. He went
out of the house in the same frozen silence, and
walked away with his face to the west, and the
towered city of Oxford saw him no more.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. §5

CHAPTER IV.

As Conrad had been living in lodgings, and was
supposed to have been reading, his disappearance
made no stir. The ways of undergraduates in
vacation being erratic, Mr. HarUng's landlady
supposed that her agreeable lodger had gone to
his own people on the whim of the moment, and
had not considered it necessary to inform her of
his movements. The fact of his having taken no
luggage was easily explained in the supposition
that he had gone home. It was not till after four
letters with the Cranford Park address on the
envelopes had been followed by a flight of telegrams
at three-hour intervals, that the lady of the river-
side villa took fright.

She telegraphed to the lady of Cranford Park,
whose photograph in an ivory frame stood on the
book table in Conrad's deserted sitting-room:

86 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"Mr. Harling left here on Wednesday morning,
September 7th."

She followed the telegram with a letter in which
she described the suddenness of her lodger's de-
parture, and how, on account of her experience of
undergraduate ways, she had attached no importance
to the fact.

Then came for Lady Mary Harling a period of
harrowing anxiety such as happily is rare in the
tragedy of domestic life. Her son had disappeared
from the world of living creatures. The river, or
the railroad, or the woods and solitary places round
Oxford, might hide the tragic close of that young
life; but those graves of youth and hope, those last
refuges of despair, refused to give up their secret.
The most indefatigable search, persevered in with-
out rest or respite for five weary weeks, the in-
vestigations of trained investigators, men who had
graduated in Scotland Yard and retired upon private
practice full of knowledge and experience, could
make nothing of the case of Conrad Harling,

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 8/

The investigators were somewhat handicapped
by the instructions of their chent, for in the midst
of her grief Lady Mary had been so much a woman
of the world as to stipulate that the search for her
son should be carried on with the utmost secrecy.
No detail, no suggestion of the tragedy was to
find its way to the newspaper press; and thus the
clues that are most often furnished by the outside
public were wanting to her private police. Not
even her most intimate friends knew that her son
was missing. Even the college dons were left in
the dark. Her agents opined that they could afford
no assistance.

Five weeks of agonising suspense, of sleepless
nights, or briefest slumbers made horrible by
visions of death, and then came a summons to a
little seaport town in North Cornwall, where in
a humble inn, the resort of sailors and fishermen,
a young man had been found whose appearance
corresponded with her son's photograph, and whose
-presence in that locality had given rise to con-
.siderable curiosity. .■; . .. ... .

88" DEAD LOVE RAS CHAINS.

Lady Mary received this summons in Hertford
Street, where she had been living throughout these
weeks of trouble, in order to be within easy reach
of her agents.

The telegram came in time for her to start in
the eleven o'clock express for Padstow, accompanied
by Daisy Meredith, her only confidant, who in-
sisted on going with her; and in the golden evening
sunlight she was sitting in the Inn parlour, alone
with her son. He sat by her side; he let her hold
his hand; he let her kiss him; but he kept a stony
silence, and his eyes looked at her with a vacant
stare.

He was quite mad.

His mother was told the story of his coming
to that place in rags, with his shoes worn off his
feet, and in appearance a tramp, but with a
valuable watch, and a handful of gold and silver
in his pocket. He had a gaunt and hungry look,
and was footsore. A doctor had been called in by
the Innkeeper, and had pronounced him mad, but
harmless. His madness might be only temporary,

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 89

a passing cloud. He had been living at the little
inn for a month, wandering about on the hills or
lying on the beach all day. The Innkeeper had
bought ready-made clothes, and other necessaries
for him with some of the money found upon him,
and had done all that could be done to make him
comfortable; but his silence made a barrier be-
tween him and the outer world. He sat among
the noisy company in the Inn parlour when the
room was full of talk and laughter, thick with the
smoke of seafaring pipes, sat in a corner by the
projecting chimney, not heeding them. He ate
the food that was put before him, but showed no
preferences, no desires.

The Innkeeper sent a lad to watch him when he
roamed about the hills, lest he should try to make
away \vith himself — but he had shown no suicidal
impulses. He only wandered aimlessly, or sat
staring at the sea. Why he had made his way
to that particular spot and why he stayed there who
could tell?

His mother asked no questions. She clasped

QO DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

her living son in her arms, the son she had thought
of among the dead, and this was much. She took
possession of him. The local doctor got her an
attendant from Plymouth, and she carried her son
to London, and installed him in his own rooms in
Hertford Street, never to part with him till the
wound in that beautiful mind was healed, and he
was again a free man and master of his life. She
made up her mind that he should never know the
restraints that other mental sufferers know. She
would be his nurse and his keeper. This was
Lady Mary's plan, but unhappily it did not work.
She had to yield to scientific opinion. He would
be better away from her. Whatever chance of
recovery there might be, and her advisers did not
hide from her that the chance was small, his
residence under her roof, the restrictions of his life
while he was an unacknowledged lunatic, would
lessen that chance. I'he constant supervision of
experienced doctors and nurses was necessary for
his welfare. Love could do little for him, love that
he did not recognise or understand.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. §1

Lady Mary yielded to medical opinion, after a
hard struggle. It was true that her love could do
nothing for him. He did not notice her coming or
going. She sat beside him for hours without winning
one glance of recognition.

She had heard the story of his love madness,
from the landlord of the "Otter's Head." She
knew that the fever of one brief summer — a lad's
extravagant passion for worthless beauty — had
withered his young life.

A wanton's perfidy had killed the happy boy
whose path lay in the sunshine, for whom she had
anticipated a life of fame and gladness. All God's
good gifts, nature's lavish bounty, were turned to
dust and ashes.

One consideration that influenced Lady Mary
was the better chance of keeping her son's secret
if he were hidden in a private asylum, lost sight
of by the outside world, a unit in the sum of sorrow
enclosed by the walls of the spacious wooded
grounds surrounding a house on the edge of Putney
Heath. So near London that it would be easy

gi DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

for her to visit him, and yet so secluded and aloof
from the busy world that no one need discover his
retreat. A physician of experience and position
was at the head of the establishment, and the
system and details were the highest outcome of
modern science and modem thought. Nowhere
could this martyr of a foolish love-dream be better
cared for; and if his reason should some day
awaken from the long apathy of melancholy mad-
ness, no one need know how the interval in his
life had been spent. It would be easy for his
mother to tell her friends that he was a traveller
in far-away places, in Central Africa, Central Asia,
anywhere. Such wanderings are the natural diver-
sions of youth and wealth.

Lady Mary, for whom truthfulness was an in-
stinct, taught herself the delicate art of lying, and in
the earlier years of her son's seclusion that new
learning came into play, for she was often questioned
about him, most of all in the first year.

"Why had he left the 'Varsity?"

"Boys are so erratic," she said, and, having

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. Q^i

found that phrase, she used it freely to answer for
everything.

Her son was all that was good and dear, but he
was erratic. Central Africa was his passion. She
never knew where he was at any moment of her
life. Yes, of course, she admitted, in reply to
friendly questions, he wrote to her sometimes;
but the postal arrangements of Uganda were not
quite perfect. No, she was not unhappy about him.
She knew how steady he was, how brave, how clever.
Yes, naturally he had companions; he was not a
solitary wanderer.

And so this martyr of maternal love spoke of
her son while the empty shell, the simulacrum of
that which was once her son, was pacing the avenue
at Roehampton, or sitting in the sunshine, dead in
life, the mere mechanical life of pulses that beat and
limbs that can move.

She went to see him two or three times a week,
when she was in London, and sat with him m his
pretty parlour, where the French windows faced
south, and opened on a gracious flower-garden. He

94 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

never recognised her. He had no occupations, no
tastes, no desires. The days came and went and
made no change in him.

The summer after Lady Mary's autumn voyage
to Ceylon, there came a gleam of hope.

Conrad had taken a fancy to one of the doctor's
dogs, a handsome Irish setter. It was the first thing
animate or inanimate that his eyes had rested on
with interest since he entered that sad world. He
patted the dog, and coaxed her to follow him to his
room. One day he called her Juno, the name of his
favourite at Cranford.

That was the first ray of memory.

The doctor told Lady Mary that he saw in this
a faint hope of ultimate cure.

"It looks as if the machine might work again!"
he said.
" Even this faint hope was much.

The setter became Conrad's constant companion,
walked with him, ate with him, slept upon his bed,
and his interest in her never diminished. But

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 95

with his mother he remained cold and unrecognising.
Once, indeed, while she was sitting with him, he
looked at her, and then pointed to the dog; but he
spoke no word. This was the second summer after
the winter in Ceylon.

She went to Italy in the autumn, and spent a
quiet contemplative winter in the old cities, Perugia,
Verona, Bologna, Siena, studying art and archi-
tecture with Daisy Meredith, who was always ready
to take up any study, to be interested in even any
fad, an admirable companion, with a bright mind
that caught fire at a spark.

It was while she was at Siena, and before the
trunks were packed for home, that there came a
letter from Roehampton — a letter that changed the
colour of Lady Mary's existence.

"Your son's mental condition has made such
marked improvement within the last month that
I think I may now venture to give you every
hope of his recovery. His brain has awakened
from the lethargy that has so long obscured his
consciousness of the outer world, and from the

96 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

hour when he first noticed the house-surgeon's
dog there has been a gradual revival of his in-
telligence, which within the last month has
advanced by leaps and bounds. You will be
astonished at the change, and, though I would
not advise his return to active life for some time
to come, I have the strongest faith in his being
ultimately able to resume his proper place in
society."

Two days after reading this letter Mary Harling
was at Roehampton.

It was a lovely afternoon in April, and the
beeches and elms, and wide lawns, and beds of
tulips, were glorified in the sunshine, and seemed
scarcely less beautiful to the mother's eager eyes
than the land of blossoming chestnuts and trailing
vines through which the train de luxe had carried
her, speeding homeward, with her thoughts one
perpetual thanksgiving to God for her son's de-
liverance.

She stood at the French window in Conrad's
sitting-room and saw him coming towards her

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. ^"J

across the lawn, alert and active, with rapid step
and happy face, handsomer than in his boyhood, his
dog leaping about him.

They clasped hands, and he kissed her in the
old boyish way.

"My dear mother!"

She could not speak. She was almost fainting;
but she was just able to get to a chair and sit dovra,
with her son beside her. The setter made a diver-
sion, by thrusting herself between them, jealous of
the stranger.

"You are as fond as ever of Juno?" Lady
Mary said, and these were the first words she could
find.

"She's a dear thing, but her name isn't Juno,
though I call her by the old name now and then.
This one is Flirt, Madame Flirt."

The dog's paws were on his shoulders, and his
face was being violently licked.

"Is Juno alive still?" he asked presently, and the
question told his mother that he knew of the lapse
of years. .

Dead Love has Chains. 7

98 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"Yes, she is flourishing, poor old dear!"

"She must be very old!"

"Thirteen last birthday."

"Yes, I remember. She was five the year I went
to Christ Church."

There came a silence. His mother's eyes were
clouded with tears as she looked at him, and it. was
impossible for her to repress all signs of agitation;
but he was perfectly calm. His eyes had a thought-
ful look, serenely meditative.

Lady Mary looked round the room he had lived
in during those weary years. His table was loaded
with books, and there was his old Eton desk which
she had sent there, hopeless of his ever using it,
now open and with sheets of manuscript scattered
about it. She looked at the books, Darwin,
Wallace, Tyndall, Clodd, and several new books on
electricity.

"You have taken up science!" she said, full of
wonder.

"Yes, it is a new world for me. The house

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. QQ

doctor here is a dab at electrical science — and we
have long jaws together."

"But I hope you mdulge yourself with a little
light literature, Thackeray, Dickens, and the poets you
were so fond of."

"They are by my bedside — my close companions.
I have a good deal of leisure for reading, you see,
now I have gone back to books."

"And you take plenty of exercise."

"I play lawn tennis or croquet whenever the
weather is possible, and court tennis every day. Of
course you know we have a tennis court."

"You look in splendid health."

"I believe I am in splendid health. The head
boss here says I ought to join you in your autumn
trip — India, Ceylon, or wherever your dear old
fogies send you, for your asthma. Would you
like that, mother, or would you think me a
bore?"

This was more than Mary Harling could stand.
She burst into tears, that kept her speechless for
some minutes.

7*

lOO DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

The house doctor seemed to have been within
earshot of her sobs, the windows being all open in
the soft spring weather. He came in tlirough the
verandah and carried Lady Mary and her son to
his own den, where he gave them tea, and where
the conversation touched only on the lightest and
pleasantest topics, with many inquiries about Lady
Mary's winter travels, the pictures she had seen,
Juliet's grave, historical Verona, the Cathedral at
Siena, the old Palace at Perugia.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. lOI

CHAPTER V.

Conrad Harling's cure was as complete as it
had been rapid. He was like a creature new born.
His physical powers had been garnered in the house
of bondage.

Extreme care had been taken of his health
dtiring those years when the mind was frozen.
Proper exercise had been insisted upon, slouching
habits had been prevented. Every means that
modem science could devise to keep the bodily
machine in splendid working order had been em-
ployed: if this unhappy young man was to have
only an automatic existence that life should be
the best of its kind. His doctors were profoundly
interested in him, as a remarkable case, a man
whose mind had been killed by one sudden grief,
a passionate young heart which had loved with such

I02 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. .

fiery ardour that the ruin of his love had been the
ruin of his mind.

No one at Roehampton had believed in his
chances of recovery, and his cure made him doubly
interesting as a case.

The head physician discussed the situation
gravely with Lady Mary.

She had kept no particular of her son's foolish
passion from him. She had told him all that she
had learnt in a long interview with Meadows and
his spinster sister.

"He has a very fine brain," the doctor told
her, "and all the best qualities of manhood, pluck,
resolution, presence of mind, energy, perseverance.
I have observed him carefully, since he has been
practically a sane man; and I have the highest ad-
miration for his character, a preux chevalier, as
every youngster of good birth and fortune, who has
never known the seamy side of life, ought to be.
But he has a highly emotional temperament You'll
wonder how I find that out perhaps, seeing what a
passionless thing life is in this place. Well, I'll tell

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. .ir03

you. His dog — that brown setter he's so fond of —
was ill. The vet. thought she was going to die. I
saw despair in your son's face — yes — a grief that
was almost despair."

"My tender-hearted boy!"

"You will have to be very careful of him. An
unhappy love affair in the morning of life made
a wreck of him. You must do all you can to
guard against a second shipwreck. He will go
back to the world still in the flower of his strength,
handsome, attractive, a magnetic young man. He
will inevitably fall in love again — and if his love
is a happy one his future will be secure. Marriage will
be his safest harbour. With a wife he loves he will
escape the dangers of imagination and temperament."

"Oh, I hope he will make a happy marriage. I
know more than one sweet girl who would be a
sweet wife."

And then Lady Mary's brow clouded with
anxious thought.

"You do not think it would be wrong for him
to marry?" she asked.

I04 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"No, no. There is nothing in his case to forbid
marriage — nothing in his history. His mental upset
was an accident. But we are going to make
very sure that his recovery is complete — before he
goes back to the world. If you and he are to
winter abroad I should advise some quiet place, out
of the beaten track, where he may have time to
take up the dropped threads of existence, and to
accustom himself to contact with strangers, where
strangers are few. I have no fear for him. He is
a splendid fellow."

"And if— half a year hence — you find his mental
health established would it be necessary to tell the
secret of those sad years to the girl he might want
to marry or to her people?"

The doctor reflected gravely.

"I think you might ignore that history without
compunction."

This opinion relieved Lady Mary's mind. She
felt she had not lied in vain.

She had all the summer in which to consider
her winter abode. Conrad stayed at Roehampton,

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. I05

with an interval of three weeks at a sea-coast
village in Devonshire, untrodden by the tourist,
where he went with his mother, and the house
doctor who had become his particular friend. The
doctor wanted a holiday, and he went as the
young man's comrade rather than his medical ad-
viser. . ; ■ .••'.■.

Here Mary Harling had the delight of seeing
her son in the plenitude of mental and bodily
health, rejoicing in his strength, like a young giant,
spending long days sailing a ten ton yacht, or
tramping over the hills with the doctor, making
friends with the fishermen and coastguards, in-
terested in every living creature and in every aspect
of nature, as he had been in his early boyhood when
all the world was new.

It was the miracle of a mind recreated, a mind
that revelled in a world whose beauty had been
forgotten in that long slumber of the brain, and
where every common spectacle of nature seemed
a thing of wonder. The purple of those heather-
clad hills, the ineffable glory of those sunsets on

I06 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

the edge of the western sea, the flowers in cottage
gardens, the gold hair and blue eyes of peasant
children, the rugged beauty of tawny-visaged fisher-
men, splendid in their rough strength — "the earth
and every common sight," filled this new mind with
joy.

And then there was that other world, the new
world of books. Poetry, fiction, history, science,
were all taken up with a fierce rapture. Science
most of all enchanted him. He threw himself with
ardour into the study of scientific progress, of the
secrets the universe had yielded up while he sat
aloof, as if in Barbarossa's cavern, and knew not the
march of time.

He surprised his mother one day by some casual
speech that showed he knew exactly how long he
had stayed in the house of bondage. He told her
afterwards that he had found her last letter in one
of his coats that had been sent from Oxford. The
pockets of all his clothes had been emptied, but
this letter had slipped under a slit in the lining of a

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. IQ^

morning coat. When memory revived, the date of
this letter, which had been kept in his desk, gave
him the date of his captivity.

Seven years. He had been seven years without
sense or knowledge.

He was now seven-and- twenty, in appearance
younger than his age; for in that long sleep of the
mind the lines that thought writes even on young
faces had made no mark upon him. He had an
almost boyish air and outlook, frank, joyous, alert,
eager. He had all the characteristics that make
youth enchanting. He would have but to ap-
pear in order to conquer, his mother thought, ad-
miring and adoring him. What girl could resist
such a lover? Oh, that he might choose wisely,
that his manhood might be won by beauty and
virtue, after the lad's fatal infatuation for worthless
charms !

His mother trembled when she thought of the
second ordeal, a passion that might, in spite of all
his gifts, prove unfortunate.

The doctors advised that he should not go to

I08 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Cranford till he had spent some time among un-
familiar surroundings. It was well also, if there
were anything in his manner, any slight deviation
from common ways, which might hint at the secret
of his long seclusion, that there should be time for
the strangeness to wear off before he went among
his own people.

His mother told him the story she had invented
to account for his disappearance.

He laughed, and praised her for her tactfulness,

"Our friends may question you, perhaps," she
said.

"About my travels? Let them interrogate to
their hearts' content. I will not leave a square
mile of Central Africa unexplored. From the Congo
to Zanzibar there shall not be an acre that I
can't talk about. I will familiarise myself with
every squall that ruffles the Tanganyika, with every
treacherous current on the Nyanza. There are
books and maps enough to give me every light and
shadow over every mile of African travel. I sha'n't
quail before the keenest explorer I may run against.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. lOQ

All I want is to know where I am supposed to have
been."

This was after he had been at liberty for half a
year, and when he and his mother were going back
to England, and to Hertford Street. ' .

They had spent the winter and early spring at a
delicious villa among hills covered with olive woods,
between Spezia and Lerici.

They had been alone together, with only a
Christmas visit from the young doctor, Conrad's
friend at Roehampton. Daisy Meredith had been
given a long holiday with her own people, whom
Lady Mary paid handsomely for the entertainment of
their daughter, a detail that was scrupulously hidden
from Daisy herself, who wondered at a certain
deference to her tastes and wishes hitherto unknown
in the home-circle.

It was not till the blackthorns were in blossom in
Cranford Park that Conrad went back to the house
where he was born, the home that he had left, full
of buoyant life, seven years before — going back to

I I O DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Oxford in the Trinity Term; and it was in that
Trinity Term, in the freshness of the early summer,
that his fate had found him.

Swift as the arrows of Phoebus Apollo, a lad's
first love had stricken him with its consuming fever.
That wild unreasoning love, the first strong impulse
of the passionate heart, had exalted a common
coquette into a goddess. Dazzled by a faultless
face, blind to all that should have warned and re-
pelled him, the impassioned boy gave up heart and
mind to his enchantress.

Friendly undergraduates hinted things, and even,
after youth's careless fashion, tried to save him; but
he had taken fire at the slightest word.

She was peerless, she was perfect. Earth held
no girl who could compare with her. What did her
surroundings matter? He would take her away
from that vulgar world. She was fit to be an
Emperor's wife; and it would be sweet humility in
her to accept him who had nothing to offer but his
money.

Thus and thus had he argued in that romantic

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS, III

dream which had enthralled him — a dream of
a brief summer term and a summer vacation'
which seemed an eternity of joy and pain, blotting
out every memory of the years that had gone
before. He thought he had not lived till he met
her.

In those placid restful days among the Italian
hills, the book of memory had opened itself, and
Conrad had spent many an hour wandering alone,
and dreaming over the passionate story that had cost
him nearly eight years of his life. That was the
price of an unreasoning love. Eight years, perhaps
the best years, of a young man's life. The miracle
was that he had not killed himself^in his despairing
rage, when he found how worthless a creature he
had worshipped. It might be that only madness —
the sudden extinction of thought and memory — had
saved him from suicide.

He looked back, and went step by step through
the old dream, with a calm mind. The love was
dead as Babylon or Nineveh — a heap of ashes — a
monument of folly, to meditate upon with self-con-

112 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

tempt. In the earlier days of his recovery the girl's
face came back to him out of the clouds. Her
beauty shone like a star. Then little by little, as
memory strengthened, he lived again through every
detail and circumstance of his love story, and follow-
ing that story, stage by stage, he saw what an abject
fool passion had made of him. He remembered
moments of jealous doubt, sudden suspicions lulled
to rest by a smile, hard questions answered with a
caress. He recalled his aching sense of the chaperon's
vulgarity, his torture of jealousy when he saw other
admirers favoured, other undergraduates, young and
attractive. He remembered the figure of the pugilist,
loafing in the Inn garden, or drinking in the bar,
or rowing, or playing cricket; a cheap Alcides, with
a certain picturesque beauty of strength and grace-
ful movement; and he remembered that never for
one instant had he thought of this man as a possible
rival.

The folly, the commonness of it all, sickened
him. He did not even want to know what had
become of her, the goddess of a single summer

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. II^

He wanted not to know, never to hear her name
agam; never to see anyone or anything that could
remind him of her. Happily there was no question
of his going back to Oxford to work for his degree.
His trustees had kept his name upon the College
books; but his mother would not even speak of the
place.

People at Cranford, neighbours, servants, hangers-
on, were delighted at his reappearance among
them. He was so handsome, and looked so young.
Whatever dark suspicions had been harboured by
friends or dependents, as the years went by and
he was still absent, were made nought by his
return. No trace of past suffering shadowed the
glory of his manhood. He was the ideal youth,
taking pleasure in all the things that youth ought to
love.

Daisy beheld him with wonder when she came
back to -Cranford. She had seen him in Hertford
Street, in that agonising interval before his banish-
ment to Roehampton. She had seen him a wreck.

Dead Love has Chains. 8

1 I 4 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

She alone was in the secret of his lost years; for
even the servants had been taught to believe that
his disordered brain was a passing trouble, the
natural symptom of a fever, and that he had re-
covered, and had gone to Africa with a friend.
Only Daisy knew the truth; and Daisy's kind heart
overflowed with gladness at finding him completely
restored. She was glad for his mother's sake. In-
deed, it was impossible not to rejoice in Lady Mary's
joy, joy that made her step light as a girl's, her
laughter gay as a child's, her hands eager to scatter
benefits on the poor and needy.

They spent more than a month at Cranford be-
fore going to London for the season; and Lady
Mary entertained all her rural neighbours, the people
who had been mystified by her son's absence, who
had speculated about him, and had lamented over
him and pitied his mother, at many a rural tea-
table, and who, beholding her young Absolom in his
strength and beauty, felt that they had wasted their
pity.

"After all, I suppose he was only roaming about

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 1I5

the world," said the squire's wife. "Young men
nowadays have such a rage for exploring."

"He had better have stayed at home and taken
the hounds," said the Squire. "It would have been
more to his credit than globe-trotting."

"But you'll allow that travelling opens the mind,"
urged a spinster aunt.

"Don't talk nonsense, Juliana. Do you suppose
a young man can learn anything from Kaffirs or
South Sea Islanders?" ; .

"But the great book of Nature — to see that un-
folded!" sighed Juliana.

"Wouldn't he see enough of Nature in a day
with the hounds? Do you think there's moi-e
education in an African swamp than in a field of
turnips, or a forty-acre pasture? I have no patience
with the rage for wasting English money on ox-
waggons and black porters, while English farmers
have to give up breeding hunters, because they can't
sell 'em." "■

The hunting was all over before Conrad and his

I 1 6 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. .

mother came home; but he rode every day, ex-
ploring every bit of country within riding distance of
Cranford. He insisted on teaching Daisy to ride,
she having come back somewhat palhd and wan
from the arid wilderness of North London, and the
domestic bickerings.

Why had she not ridden in all these years, with
a stud of hunters eating their heads off?

Lady Mary blushed at the question, which
struck her as a reproach. She had thought a
governess-cart and a sturdy pony good enough for
Daisy, a cart in which to drive herself about among
the scattered homesteads and cottages, carrying
charitable gifts, or kindly messages, visiting the sick,
and making herself beloved by young and old,
since she was not of the strong-minded order. Even
when she saw things that were amiss her word of
reproof in due season was as mild as other people's
blessings.

And now Lady Mary felt that a young woman
of Daisy's fine health and figure ought to have been
allowed to take some more pleasure out of the horses

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. J'T^

than feeding them \vith sugar or apples on a morn-
ing visit to the stables.

The horses had been there — growing stale and
elderly — for eight years, and no one but the
corndealer and the grooms had profited by their
existence.

"I didn't know that she would care about riding!"
said Lady Mary. " She was such a thorough cockney
before she came to me."

"She would adore it. I asked her yesterday
when she was petting Mayflower — the old mare,
don't you know, clever as a cat, and quiet as a
sheep. She flushed up like a child. You get her
a habit, and Mayflower and I will soon teach her
to ride."

The habit was procured from a Southampton
tailor in less than a week, while Mayflower was being
broken to the side-saddle; and Daisy was soon scour-
ing the country by her cousin's side.

"You women have all got light hands," Conrad
said. "You've only to learn how to use 'em. And
you sit your horse uncommonly well for a beginner."

I I 8 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"And you've a neat figure, and a wild rose
complexion that doesn't turn scarlet after a gallop,"
he continued within himself.

He did not want to flatter the young lady. She
was a kind of cousin, and he treated her in a
brotherly way that was charming. He carried her
off for a ride nearly every morning, forgetting' that
she was his mother's companion, and ought to
be winding silks for the landscape on the em-
broidery frame, the mill-stream and poplars that
Lady Mary had been engaged upon in her cabin
when she talked to Jane Brown. He found a
second horse for her, and he showed himself so
wise in his selection that no harm ever came to
her from either mount. He made her play croquet
with him, and here she was the adept, and could
give him bisques, for which humiliation he revenged
himself in the evening at billiards. It was a hum-
drum kind of existence, but just the existence that
was best for him in the opinion of the Roehampton
doctors.

Lady Mary began to take alarm. Was he

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. II^

falling in love with Daisy Meredith? Daisy, who
was charming as a dependent and protegee, but
who was utterly inadequate for the proud position
■of Conrad Harling's wife. Except that she was
a good and pure woman, she would be almost as
objectionable as the Inn-keeper's daughter; for the
blood of Lady Mary's ducal race had been filtered
through more than one plebeian family before the
union of Daisy's parents, and those parents were
in themselves particularly objectionable, a husband
and wife who quarrelled and parted once a year,
who were always impecunious, and always trying
some new device for earning money, the man in
the city, the woman in the suburbs, singing-mistress,
lady-milliner — lady-cook, beauty- doctor. There was
no limit to the potentialities of discredit or even of
disgrace. Lady Mary would hardly have been sur-
prised to read of Mrs. Meredith's debut at a music-
hall; for the unfortunate woman had a fine contralto
voice which Daisy had inherited.

She was surprised to discover the girl so much
prettier than she had ever thought her hitherto.

I20 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Perhaps it was the influence of youth, Conrad's
buoyant temper, the rides, the games, the long days
in sun and wind, that had given such lucid beauty
to the large grey eyes, such a brightness of rose and
lily to the fair young face.

Daisy was six-and-twenty, and had talked of
herself as passe'e, and had so considered herself
for some time; yet every year she saw beauties
reigning triumphantly in their seventh or eighth
season, growing only of more imperious and world-
renowned charms as the years went by, like peaches
slowly ripening on a southern wall, where every hour
of sunshine deepens the crimson and amber of their
bloom.

Lady Mary began to think that Daisy was pretty
enough to be dangerous. And then she was the
first English girl Conrad had met in his new life.
There lay the peril. She was certainly the prettiest
girl in that part of the world; but although Daisy
as a typical young woman was charming, Daisy's
people made her impossible.

Remembering the doctor's grave counsel. Lady

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 121

Mary told herself that however impossible the girl
might be, from her point of view, if Conrad set his
heart upon marrying her he must not be opposed
in his desire. Indeed, his mother must be thankful
that his choice had fallen on a virtuous woman. He
must not be thwarted; he must not be disappointed.
The passionate heart that had suffered so cruel an
agony of lad's love must not suffer from the nobler
love of manhood.

He must not be opposed; but he might be managed.

Lady Mary announced her intention of going to
London directly after the Whitsuntide holidays.
"London will be at its best," she said.

Conrad owned frankly that he preferred the
country; but he expressed himself pleased to go
wherever his mother liked.

"I know you love May fair better than the most
romantic spot on earth, ma'am," he said, smiling
at her.

He always addressed her as "ma'am" in their
lighter moods. Mother was a word for confidences
and quiet talk, when they were alone.

122 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"I was bom there," Lady Mary answered
simply.

"That was a solecism. You ought to have
been born at one of the ducal seats. A town house
wasn't worthy of my stately mother. I think you
must have been stately even as a child. You wore
your sash with an air, and crushed the nursery foot-
man if he forgot to bring your bread and milk on
a salver."

They were settled in Hertford Street early in
June, when West End London was certainly at its
best, a glorified city, full of people whose only
business was pleasure, full of blossoming trees,
and brilliant flower-beds, and exquisite frocks and
hats, and beautiful faces; full of fashions that
caught the eye from their novelty, just queer
enough to be called chic, and that would be hack-
neyed and stale at Brixton before the end of the
summer.

Lady Mary opened her house as it had never
been opened since Mr. Harling's death. Her

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. I23

hospitalities were bounded only by the limits of
time and opportunity. She gave two dinners
a week, and had people at luncheon every day;
but all her little entertainments were part of one
deep-laid scheme: to bring the most eligible girls
she could find into her son's company, until some
day the girl of girls would be found among those
eligible ones, and Conrad would marry, to the
delight of his heart and the increase of his social
distinction. So much in Lady Mary's world
depended on a young man's choice of a wife,
whether he should double his weight in the social
scale or halve it. To marry Daisy would be to
halve it.

There were at least ten girls in Lady Mary's
visiting book who were eligible; and of these six
were beauties, while three were great heiresses, and
one was the daughter of a famous politician whose
prestige and influence would assure a young man's
success in the parliamentary arena.

Lady Mary watched the effect produced by
each of these gifted ten; and although she saw

124 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

her son pleased to find himself sitting next a lovely
face, or a vivacious companion, or a girl who could
talk politics with ease and discretion, she could
perceive no sign of his being seriously impressed.

She returned to the charge day after day, fol-
lowing up a luncheon and the charm of a huge
picture hat, with a dinner and the attraction of
Parian shoulders and rounded arms. And all this
beauty left Conrad cold. He talked, he danced, he
even flirted mildly with Lady Mary's eligibles, but
he showed no preferences. A pretty girl was a
pretty girl and no more. He had no more romantic
ideas about them than Peter Bell had about a
primrose by the river's brim. The better they
waltzed or the better they could talk the better he
liked them; and his mother observed with regret
that it was the girls who had done their four or five
seasons whose society Conrad most affected. Their
vivacity and keen criticism of life amused and
interested him.

Everything interested him. It was a mind new
born.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. ,125

The life of the mind was new. Science, htera-
ture, art, music, facts, fancies, superstitions, foUies,
all things were new. At eight-and-twenty years of
age he was still in the flower of his youth, strong as
a lion; and he had the freshness of a lad of twenty
just escaped from a public school.

In the country his horses and dogs had been
enough for amusement: in London the novel
pleasure of rushing through the air on the last and
finest development of the motor science took his
fancy, and he had not been in Hertford Street ten
days before he had established his garage and be-
come owner of a Panhard and a Mercedes.

He spent his money with a royal magnificence;
and, on finding that his mother's income could not
afford more than occasional stalls at the opera, he
hurried off to Bond Street, and wrote a cheque for
a box on the grand tier.

"Now, ma'am, you need have no more trouble
about your seats on the Wagner nights," he
said. "You will be as much at home at
Covent Garden as in your own drawing-room —

126 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

and I shall drop in every night — when it isn't
Wagner."

His love of music was not the educated love.
The old operas pleased him best, the operas with
stories that he could understand, and melodies
that haunted him: Lucrezia Borgia, Rigoletto,
Traviata, Fausi , and his first favourite, Don
Giovanni.

He had the gaiety of heart which charms. In-
vitations poured in upon him; manoeuvTing mothers
courted him. He was handsome, he was rich, and
of unblemished character, since his mother's intense
pride in him was a warranty for his good conduct
during those years of travel.

He had not spent too much money; he had not
been troublesome; he was quite the most popular
young man of his season.

Lady Mary rejoiced in his gladness with a swell-
ing heart, rejoiced with wonder. She had feared
that the shadow of those blank years, the memory,
however dim, of that long captivity, would never
leave him, that through all his after life the thought

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. ^2/

of what he had been would be a recurring pain,
and that he would never be quite as other men of
his age.

And now she knew that he was superior to
other men: that the long slumber of his faculties
had made him a stronger man on his awakening.
It did not even pain him to speak of the past, or
of things that touched upon the past. He showed
his mother a photograph of Stella Meadows in
an evening frock, with a liberal display of shoulders
and arms. A girl who has no opportunities of
wearing evening dress likes to be photographed
in it.

Lady Mary owned that the girl was beautiful,
absolutely refined in feature and expression. It
was difficult to think of her as a rustic Innkeeper's
daughter, still more difficult to think of her as the
mistress of a pugilist. But at Oxford Lady Mary
had heard something about the girl's mother, and
a scandal attaching to the girl's birth, which sug-
gested a more aristocratic origin, a patrician lover, a
deceived husband.

128 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

While she looked at the photograph Lady Mary-
had a vague memory of another face of the same
delicate type, though not actually resembling this
face. She tried to remember when and where she
had seen it, and worried her brain for half a day
in the effort to remember, when suddenly, as she
sat in her victoria, stopping by the Park rails to
talk to her friends, the scene in her cabin on the
Electro came back to her, and the face of Jane
Brown.

"It is not the face of a pure woman," thought
Lady Mary, wondering at this resemblance of
character and expression rather than form, the
vague something which made one face suggest
the other.

Jane Brown had not written, as she had asked
her, to say that things had gone well with her.
Lady Mary had almost counted on such a letter,
as a natural expression of gratitude for kindness ex-
perienced in a day of misery. But it might be that
things had not gone well. The wretched girl might
not have survived her hour of trial, might not have

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. I 29

lived to clasp a child to her heart, and to devote
herself to a life of atonement and self-sacrifice, as
Mary Hading, who took a severe view of the
situation, had hoped she might. In her motherly
kindness she had imagined a future of grey peace,
perhaps with a husband, some humble -minded
Christian, willing to take a penitent to his heart,
and cherish her, with a sober affection, as a brand
saved from the burning.

But no word had come, and Lady Mary inclined
to think that Jane Brown was lying in the last long
sleep in some neglected churchyard in a lonely
parish, hidden away in the south of Ireland, where
the long roll of the Atlantic breakers would lament
over the short sin-stained life.

Lady Mary had little time to think of Jane
Brown in this joyous midsummer, with her son's
animated presence bursting in upon her matronly
occupations at all hours of the day. He adored
his mother, and was never in the house long with-
out giving her a taste of his company, over and
above the social hours of eating and drinking

Dead Love has Chains. 9

130 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

together, those cheerful gatherings in a handsome
dining-room which must surely be regretted, as a
memory of something that was pleasant, when
the chemists of the future have found out a
way of sustaining healthy and vigorous life on
tabloids.

Conrad's high spirits were a continual feast,
and a continual surprise to his mother. From the
hour when he heard her manner of accounting for
his absence he had treated his African travels as
a stupendous joke. That his mother, the severely
truthful, could lie for him, was to his mind an
astounding instance of maternal love, and to him
the African fable was an inexhaustible source of
amusement.

So far from shirking any allusion to his travels
he led people on to question him; and he was never
tired of reciting his adventures in that wonder-
world. He had collected every book of travels
that had appeared since Livingstone first kindled
the British mind with enthusiasm for African

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. I31

adventure. He had read himself into Africa, and
there was no detail of the life — no thrilling moment
of discovery, no vivid impression of the picturesque
in land or water, mountain or forest, no colour of
earth or sky, that he had not absorbed and made
part and parcel of his own mind. With Stanley,
with Cameron, with Burton, with Trivier, he had
wandered and wondered. He plagiarised freely,
but from so wide a variety of writers that he was
not afraid of being found out — not even when
almost in Cameron's very words he thrilled a
luncheon party by his impressions at first sight of
the Tanganyika, or when with Stanley he plunged
into the blue waters of the Zambesi for his morning
bath, and found himself tumbling about among a
herd of hippopotami. Adventures with native
kings, adventures in dug-out canoes on tempest-
tossed lakes, adventures with elephants, lions, an-
telopes— hair-breadth escapes of every kind — he had
them all at the service of his friends, and was ad-
mired as the most vivid of colourists, the most graphic
of narrators.

9*

132 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

His mother and Daisy Meredith heard, and mar-
velled, and sometimes ventured a grave reproof,
which he laughed away.

"The initial lie having been told there can be
no harm in expatiating upon it," he said. "And
remember, Daisy, all my adventures are true, ab-
solutely and matter-of-factly true, although they
didn't happen to me. But I shall have to make
them really true some day, for I think I have caught
the African fever; and then your conscience will be
lightened of a burden, and you and my mother can
sleep easy in your beds."

Lady Mary exclaimed and remonstrated. Could
she ever know a night's rest if he were a traveller
on that Dark Continent where when two go together
only one returns?

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS, I33

CHAPTER VI.

Daisy's life narrowed to strictly domestic limits
in Hertford Street. She had left her habit at
Cranford with the hunters and shooting dogs, the
mallets and billiard balls, all things belonging to
the life that she and Conrad had led together, in
frankest friendship, almost as brother and sister.
He had brought a couple of hacks to London, and
he rode in the Row before breakfast; but Lady Mary
had set her face rigidly against Park riding for Daisy
Meredith.

"I let you have your own way about her in
Hampshire," she told her son, "but I don't want
you to go on spoiling her now we are in London,
where I really can't do without her."

Conrad gave way without a struggle; and his
mother assured herself that he was not in love. A
lover would not have been so reasonable. He told

134 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Daisy that she should ride to hounds in October;
and whenever there were ladies on his motor she
was one of the party.

There was no desertion of his rural comrade.
Conrad was always kind after his fraternal fashion;
but he was tremendously in request, and had very
little time to spare. He went to dances that
Daisy did not hear of, choice balls in great houses,
where from five-and-twenty to fifty of the fine fleur
of young manhood were entertained at a sumptuous
dinner in order that they might condescend to
dance.

Daisy thought herself lucky if she went to
three balls in a season, chaperoned by one of Lady
Mary's good-natured friends. She used to awake
in the warm summer night, hearing carriage wheels
rolling up and down the narrow street, and pictur-
ing to herself the brilliant scene in Park Lane, or
Stanhope Street, or Berkeley Square, or Grosveuor,
or Belgravia, and picturing Conrad Harling as the
grandest, handsomest, most utterly delightful young
man there.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 135

It was after one of the biggest balls of the year,
when the summer and the season were at the
zenith, that Conrad expressed himself more en-
thusiastically than usual. It was the finest ball he
had ever seen.

"I suppose the flowers were something wonder-
ful," suggested Daisy.

"Fairy-land. A week's food for an East End
parish squandered on lilies and roses. Walls of
roses, pyramids of lilies; words cannot paint the
splendour."

"And the supper?" inquired Lady Mary.

" Gunier cum Gargantiia, an endless web of
peaches and asparagus and ortolans and quails,
young turkeys stuffed with truffles, hams stewed in
champagne, everything expensive that a greedy man
could imagine. I took a turn in the Green Park
when I came away, and saw the tramps lying asleep
in the pale green light, with open mouths, and faces
the colour of death."

Lady Mary sighed, and Daisy sighed. To them

136 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

as to Conrad the contrast was dreadful. Everybody
feels the same sharp pang, and forgets all about it
three minutes afterwards.

"And the people?" inquired Daisy. "Were all
the pretty people there?"

"All, married and single — and one over."

"Who was that?"

"The new beauty. It seems I ought to have
heard of her, though she only came to London a
week ago, after all the drawing-rooms were over.
She was supposed to have been presented in Dublin
last winter, a Dowager told me. As if it mattered
when, where, ever, or never? She looks as if she
had dropped from a star, too ethereal for earth."

"Did you dance with her?" Daisy asked, with a
throb of heart-pain.

"Two waltzes. She waltzes divinely. I felt like
a Cyclops embracing a sylph."

"You haven't told us who she is," said Lady
Mary, with whom the who was more essential than
the what.

"Oh, she is quite quite, don't you know; an

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. ^37

only daughter with a young stepmother. Her father
is Sir Michael Thelliston, the General who dis-
tinguished himself by his management of that little
Gold Coast scrimmage the other day — or, at least,
made people believe it of him."

"Is she an only daughter?"

"An only child. The stepmother is a gushing
person, and told me all about her husband, and all
about Irene. That's her name, and she looks it.
I want you to call upon Lady Thelliston, ma'am, at
your earliest convenience. This afternoon, if you
like."

Lady Mary smiled at him across the cosy round
table. They breakfasted in the library, a room
with an old-fashioned bow-window opening into a
morsel of garden, which was full of flowers that
were brought there in their beauty and taken away
directly they had done blooming, like young beauties
in a Sultan's seraglio.

Lady Mary smiled, and told herself that the
spark had been found, the young heart had taken
fire. This new beauty had only to appear and to

138 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

conquer, where her garden of girls had been im-
potent to charm.

"Is Miss Thelliston much prettier than all the
other pretty girls you know?" she asked.

"Prettier? Oh, I don't know how to measure
prettiness. She is almost too exquisite to be mortal
— like those marvellous orchids that seem too beauti-
ful to be only flowers."

"You talk as Romeo talked of Juliet."

"Do I? What would I not have given for Juliet's
balcony last night — to have had a long jaw with
her after the ball?"

"Well, I'll call upon Lady Thelliston — since I
suppose they are new-comers."

"Quite new; mere babes in the wood from a
society point of view. He has been fighting all
his life — in India — Egypt — Africa — always doing
well — according to the wife — but never coming to
the front as he did in the West African row.
Call this afternoon, ma'am, if you please. I
should like to know what you think of the step-
mother."

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. J 39

"Do you know where they Uve?"

"Yes, in a slip of a house in Chapel Street —
with a front that looks like a ladder of flower-
boxes."

"How did you come to know the house?"

"She rides every morning — in point of fact, I
rode with her this morning — I walked my horse
that way — and saw her mount. She has an Arab
that her father brought from India for his wife —
who had been married before, by the way, to an-
other soldier — and the wife doesn't like the horse —
in point of fact, can't ride. And so her step-
daughter has the reversion of him."

"And she told you all this in two waltzes," ex-
claimed Daisy.

"The stepmother told me. Miss Thelliston is
not loquacious."

"Does the young lady ride alone?"

"No; her father rides with her, but he was
under the weather this morning, and she had only
her groom. She was dancing at three o'clock,
and in the Row before eight. She is not one of

140 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

your rest-cure girls who lie in bed reading French
novels till it's time to dress for lunch."

"I hope there are no such girls," said Lady
Mary, with whom getting up early was a part of
religion.

Conrad could scarcely be more eager about his
mother's visit to Lady Thelliston than she herself
was to become acquainted with the girl who had
attracted her son. The history of Conrad's future
life must needs be coloured by the woman he loved
and married. That he should choose wisely, now
in the flower of manhood, he who had so unwisely
chosen in his early youth, was of infinite import-
ance. She had been told that he must not be
thwarted in a second love-affair, that to keep the
balance of that fine mind, now perfectly adjusted,
there must be no new love-trouble. He had loved
with an intensity of passion rare in early youth,
a concentration of purpose that indicated unusual
strength of will and unusual sensitiveness. To cross
his will now, to come between him and the desire

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. I4I

of his heart, might be fatal. His doctors had
signified as much; and his mother thought of this
sudden fancy with a thrill of fear.

He had talked of the new beauty with boyish
lightness, too openly, perhaps, for real feeling;
but a fancy begun so lightly might grow into pas-
sion; and, oh, what a lifetime of joy or sorrow might
have begun among the roses and lilies of last
night's ball! Romeo's tragedy of swift, sudden love
began at such a festival, among the lights and
music in the joyous crowd.

Mary Harling felt that her peaceful days were
over. She was on the threshold of a passionate
drama, the drama of her son's destiny.

Was the girl a lady? That is the first question
a woman of Lady Mary's milieu asks. Sir Michael
TheUiston's daughter was at least of decent birth,
and must have been decently brought up; but
Lady Mary had met with girls of superior lineage
and expensive education who were not ladies.
Those were, of course, the exceptions that prove
the rule; but what if this girl were an abnormal

142 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

specimen, and not a lady? Conrad had declared
that she was "quite quite," and after all that he
had suffered for the sad mistake of his boyhood
he was surely, of all men, the least likely to be
captivated by the loveliest girl in London, if she
were bad style.

Bad style was Lady Mary's bite noire. She went
about the world with a suspicious eye, finding it
in unexpected places. That girl on the steamer,
for instance, with the hideous phrase: "Don't
give me away," in the midst of her tragedy. She
had never forgotten her shudder of disgust even
in a moment of pity. That girl was undoubtedly
bad style; and all that had happened to her in
Cashmere had been more or less the result of bad
style; a chaperon with neither morals nor manners,
a lover who was not a gentleman: the kind of life
Lady Mary had read about in Anglo-Indian
stories.

Slang was interwoven with Conrad's speech, but
slang had to be forgiven in a man, like smoking,
and sporting papers, and motors, and bull-dogs;

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 'I43

but a slangy phrase from a woman's lips was in-
tolerable.

Lady Mary went alone to pay her visit. She
often took Daisy with her on such pioneering calls,
when she had been asked to be civil to some friend
of her friends; but this was too solemn an occa-
sion. She wanted to be alone, to have all her
senses about her. She wanted to weigh the girl
and the stepmother in her judicial balance, which
she could hardly do if Daisy and the girl were
keeping up a trivial chatter at her elbow.

She went early in the afternoon, wishing to be
the only visitor.

She looked up disapprovingly at the tall narrow
house, the ladder of flower-boxes, scenting bad
style in that flamboyant facade. There were too
many flowers, and the effect was garish. Yet Lady
Mary liked colour, and would have admired the
joyous dazzle of tropelium and lobelia, pink geranium
and sulphur marguerites, on any other facade. She
went into the house with a sinking heart. It had

144 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

come too soon, the manhood's love which she feared,
the love that must be satisfied.

In the narrow entrance hall, and on the nar-
rower stahcase, everything was gay and pretty: the
white woodwork, the white wall-paper, over which
gigantic pink roses clustered and clambered, the
moss-green velvet pile that covered every inch of
the stairs and landing. In the drawing-room where
the visitor found herself alone, there v/as the same
gay colour. It was the house of a petite inaitresse,
a house like a bonbonniere , and it seemed almost
too diminutive to be a real house after the spacious-
ness of the old family mansion in Hertford Street,
where all Lady Mary's audacities in the way of
colour had failed to give an air of gaiety. This box
of a house on the sunny side of the street sparkled
and glowed like a bed of summer roses.

The stepmother appeared before the visitor's
eager eyes had time to disentangle the elements of
prettiness, china, water-colours, miniatures, bonbon-
boxes, hot-house flowers, scent-bottles, fans.

"How more than sweet of you to come

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 145

SO soon," Lady Thelliston exclaimed, with out-
stretched welcoming hand. "Mr. Harling told
us he would ask you to call — but we thought even
if you were so good as to come, it might be ages
first."

"I like to know all my son's friends," Lady
Mary said, in a quiet voice. "He — he so much en-
joyed his dance with Miss Thelhston. He says she
waltzes divinely."

Even in saying these few words she had time
to discover that the stepmother had been remark-
ably handsome, and that her complexion came
out of bottles. As a work of art she was faultless:
hair, figure, hands, eyebrows; but Mary Harling
shivered at the thought of her as Conrad's mother-
in-law.

"Isn't she wonderful? Buried alive in an out-of-
the-way corner of the South of Ireland ever since
she began to grow up, and yet the most delicious
dancer, and more accomplished in every way than
one girl in a hundred."

"Is Sir Michael Thelliston an Irishman?"

Dead Love has Chains. lO

146 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"Intensely Irish, though I'm happy to say a long
life in India has only left him a suspicion of their
dreadful accent."

"And Miss Thelliston was educated at home —
in her father's house?" questioned Lady Mary, want-
ing to find out everything about these people, but
painfully reminded of previous visits in strange
drawing-rooms to inquire about the character of an
upper servant.

"My poor Michael has no Irish home; he sold
every acre ages ago, when he saw things were going
from bad to v/orse. Our sweet Irene has been
vegetating under the care of a spinster aunt — Roman
Catholic — and a bigot at that."

Lady Mary was dumb. She had been seized
with an inward trembling, which made her look for-
lornly at the nearest gold and crystal scent bottle,
wondering whether it held eau-de-cologne, or any
other reviving essence.

"It was not her father's fault that she was not
having a good time in India. The climate was
her only enemy. He sent her to Cashmere, but

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 147

even that divine climate didn't suit her — so there
was nothing to be done but send her home. It
was before our marriage, and the poor man had no
one to advise or help him. And then came the
West Coast war, and his regiment left India, a month
after our wedding day. Hard lines for me, wasn't it?"

Lady Mary murmured something, with dry lips;
and Lady Thelliston, always charmed to talk of her-
self, went on blandly:

"But it was all for the best — and the little
African war did more for Michael than Burma or
Waziristan, and he got his K.C.B. just in time,
after a long, hard-working career, and very few
chances. I came home to find a house, and furnish
it, and get everything ready for my dear old man;
and the first thing I made him do for me when he
came from Africa was to take me to Ireland to see
my new daughter."

Again a murmur from dry lips, a despairing look
in a face that seemed frozen. Lady Thelliston, ad-
miring her own coiffure in a narrow panel of looking-
glass, meandered on complacently:

lO*

148 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"What a revelation! I expected a clumsy, over-
grown, potato- fed girl, with a thick brogue, and
no manners; and I found a gem of the first water:
a girl pretty enough to make what people call
'the match of the season.' I thought of Tom
Moore's lovely song, 'Full many a gem of purest
ray,' don't you know, and I insisted on bringing
her to London with us. She has only been here
three weeks, and she can hardly walk in the Park
in peace. People stare atrociously, and I saw
women standing on chairs to look at her last Sunday
— the women who come on char-a-bancs from
Brixton. Enfin, my stepdaughter is talked about
everywhere as the new beauty."

"Is she pleased with her success?" Lady Mary
asked, finding a voice at last, a voice that sounded
not her own.

"If she is she doesn't show it. She's rather a
curious girl. If she were not so lovely I should call
her strong-minded," added Lady Thelliston, as if the
union of mind and beauty were impossible.

The door was opened quietly, and the new

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. (I49

beauty appeared, tall and slender, with loosely-
coiled hair that held the sunlight, and dark eyes
that were like deep waters.

She was the girl Mary Harling expected to see,
but glorified. The troubled countenance, the
sullenness of despair, the slovenly garments, had
obscured much of that delicate beauty, and there
had been the indefinable suggestion of a lost woman
that had shocked and pained even a heart inclined
to pity.

To-day she looked as pure as a June lily, her
simple white frock perfection, her coiffure admirable,
her pose graceful and dignified.

"Mr. Harling did not forget his promise," said
the stepmother, smiling at her. "Lady Mary, this is
my daughter, Irene, who greatly enjoyed her dances
with Mr. Harling."

"It is so seldom one's partners are as good as
Mr. Harling," the girl said quietly, while Lady Mary
looked at her in silence.

The girl's calm outlook, and steady accents, took
her breath away. That she could stand before her

150 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

there, smiling, unabashed, with the air of a young
Princess accustomed to adulation, disgusted the
woman who had been kind to her in her day of
shame. She did not consider that there had been
time for Irene Thelhston to prepare her mind for
this encounter, to muster all that she had of courage,
or of audacity, to face the situation. Nor did she
reckon with the defiant attitude of a girl who had
lately discovered that she was eminently beautiful,
and had the world at her feet.

"What an actress," thought Lady Mary, and
she was thankful for the loquacity of the step-
mother, who expatiated upon last night's ball: the
pretty people who were there, the harridans and
horrors who ought not to have been there, the
ortolans and peaches, the scraggy shoulders and painted
faces, the band, the rose-wreathed staircase and the
royal guests.

She gave a cover to Lady Mar}''s silence and
enabled her to make her escape, with a somewhat
hasty adieu.

While Lady Thelliston rang the bell, the girl

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 15 I

followed the visitor to the landing, as if by an
instinct of politeness; but directly they were out-
side the mask dropped, and something of the old
trouble came into the dark eyes, and trembled on
the lips.

But the girl spoke no word. She only looked
at Lady Mary very earnestly, and made the sign
of the cross, an instant before the butler appeared
to conduct the guest to the door, where the unex-
ceptionable footman and the unexceptionable Victoria
waited. The visit had not lasted a quarter of an
hour, but Mary Harling went out into the sunshine
dazed, her mind paralysed.

"Home," she told the servant, as she sank into
her seat, and footman and coachman wondered.

Home was all she wanted. She was not equal
even to driving round the Park. She wanted to
shut herself in her own room; her bedroom, where
nobody but her maid would come; and to think out
the situation.

"He must not marry her, he must not marry
her."

/

152 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

The words repeated themselves in her brain, like
the strokes of a hammer. And then came that other
thought. He must not be thwarted.

There was the horror of it.

And then there was her oath, the only vow that
she had ever made upon that sacred symbol. In
her well-ordered life there had been no need of
oaths, no secrets to keep, until her son's break-
down obliged silence. She remembered how the
girl had pushed the crucifix into her reluctant
hand, and how her lips had rested on the sacred
form. Could that distracted girl, bowed to the dust
by her disgrace, ashamed, and angry with the fate
that had put shame upon her, could that crouching
figure, those eyes hiding from the light, be one and
the same as the dazzling vision of to-day, so pure-
looking and ethereal?

The oath bound her. She could give her son
no word of warning, for what manner of warning
would serve if it were less than a revelation of the
girl's history? What other obstacle could be put
in the way of ardent love? Unless she could tell

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 1 53

him that the girl he admired was a fallen creature
she could not hope to influence him. She could
only hope what most people hope in the face of a
threatened misfortune, that the danger would blow
over. This sudden fervour, this impetuous fancy for
a lovely face, might pass and leave no permanent
impression. Was it not

"too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say it lightens?"

She tried to believe that her son's ardour in-
dicated a caprice and not a passion. But if it
were otherwise — if he were to fall seriously in love
with Irene Thelliston, well — she had weapons, even
if tied on one hand by her oath, and on the other
by her dread of opposing her son's will. She would
fight for her beloved. It should be war to the death
between her and this audacious girl, who could pre-
sume to greet her with a placid smile, pure and in-
nocent-looking as Mary when she listened to the
Divine Messenger.

She wondered if in every crowded ballroom, in

154 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

every throng of girlish faces, there were secrets as
foul as this.

"I must fight for my son," she said to herself,
and then began to meditate upon the weapons she
could use.

Could she carry him to the other end of the
world with her, pretend an ardent desire to visit
the Antipodes, and persuade him to take her
there? He was so kind, so indulgent to all her
wishes, that if he were fancy-free it would be
the easiest thing to make him forego all the plea-
sures of an English winter, the hunting and shooting
that his soul longed for, and take upon himself
the toil and burden of a journey round the world,
to do her pleasure. But if he were no longer
fancy-free, if his heart were touched, to pro-
pose such an exile would be to ensure a re-
fusal. He would see through the manoeuvre,
and resent the attempt to part him from his
enchantress.

No! It was to the enchantress herself she must
appeal: even if she had to sue in forma pauperis.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS, '155

urging the inferiority of such a marriage for the
new beauty. The girl who was expected to make
the great match of the season could very well
afford to refuse a commoner with thirty thousand
a year.

She would appeal to Miss Thelliston's vanity,
to her ambition, to her greed of wealth; or remem-
bering her impressions on board the Electro, and
believing that there was some good in the creature
whose remorse for sin had been so keen an agony,
she would take a higher ground as a mother
pleading for her son. She would appeal to the
girl's better feelings.

"You have all the world before you to choose,"
she might say. "Let this man go. What can it
matter to you?"

156 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

CHAPTER Vn.

Having resolved upon the thing that she must
do Lady Mary was able to compose her spirits, and
to appear in the drawing-room at a quarter-
past eight, with the usual' placid and reposeful
air. She dined at half- past eight in summer,
so as to allow Conrad one more half-hour of sun-
shine and open air — or perhaps a rubber in the
card-room at Arthur's. Daisy was always dressed
early, and she liked to amuse herself at the piano
till Lady Mary came down. It was her idle half-
hour after the last letter had been written, Daisy's
chief duties lying in the epistolary line.

There was daylight still at half-past eight, and
only the reading-lamps on the tables had been
lighted, amber-shaded lamps that made for pretti-
ness in the large, lofty rooms with their gilded
Louis Seize furniture, and turquoise blue hangings.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 157

There were some fine pictures of the decorative
order, a Leighton, a Poynter, a Frank Dicksee,
two classical subjects by Albert Moore, a dog and
a girl by Briton Riviere, and an Alma Tadema
that sparkled like a gem: pictures chosen years
before, when Mr. Harling refurnished his father's
house for his young wife. The room had a large
splendour utterly unlike the petite viaitresse air
that Lady Mary had objected to in the Chapel
Street drawing-room. There were books on all
the tables, and there was Lady Mary's embroidery
frame under a silken cover — but the costly frivolities
that crowd modern tables and make them useless
as tables were not there. The only ornaments
were a few pieces of Sevres in a pair of old French
buhl and ormolu cabinets.

If punctuality is the politeness of Princes it
is also the homage of sons, and Conrad's usual
way was to be in the drawing-room at least ten
minutes before dinner was announced. It was
the moment in which he told his mother the news
of the day: who was alive and who was dead

158 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

among illustrious invalids; who was in and who
was out in the bye-election; what horse had won,
or which side was beaten at Lord's. Although
these latter results neither troubled nor excited her,
she liked to hear of them from him, and would even
affect an interest in racing and cricket.

This evening he only appeared two minutes
before the butler, bright-eyed and flushed, fastening
the last button of his waistcoat as he came into the
room.

"Why weren't you in the Park this evening,
ma'am?" he asked gaily. "I looked for your Victoria
in the usual spot, and ever so many people asked
me why you weren't there. The finest afternoon this
summer ! "

"I thought you were going to Windsor on your
motor, as you arranged with Captain Selkirk on
Wednesday."

"I let Selkirk go alone, with his wife. They
were only married in February, and they would rather
have a long tete-a-tete than my company."

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 'l^g

"And were you all the afternoon in the Park?"
Daisy asked.

"I was there in the golden hour when the river
of life is at the flood — when the Bobbies are clearing
the road for the Queen, and when there's not a
chair to be had for love or money."

He gave her his arm, and they went downstairs,
Lady Mary following in a stately solitude. Even
in that one flight of stairs she had time to ask
herself why she had ever been so demented as to
object to Daisy as a wife for her son, why she
had not encouraged his liking for the poor cousin,
and done all in her power to keep him in the
country, where Daisy was a bright particular star
among the rather plain daughters of the Squires
and Squireens, and of the one great nobleman,
whose four over-grown girls nobody had been in-
duced to bid for.

How well adapted they were for each other;
Daisy just tall enough for good style, her neat
shining head a little above Conrad's shoulder, not
insolently over-topping him.

l6o DEAD L0\^ HAS CHAINS.

Everything about Daisy was satisfactory, her
manners, her clothes, the songs she sang, her
way of thinking — everything. Indeed, it was only
natural that Lady Mary should approve of a girl
who was the work of her own hands. All the
refinements of Daisy's education, all the things
that had formed her taste and improved her mind
— travel, books, nice people — had come to her
from Lady Mary. She had gone to Hertford
Street a raw girl — with one shabby box, and a
flavour of Bohemia in her manner, and she was
now, in Mary Harling's opinion, a perfect specimen
of gentle blood and gentle rearing. She was good
style. Lady Mary had done for her what Nature
did for Wordsworth's Lucy. She had made her a
lady of her own.

And Conrad had been in a fair way to love
this girl; he had been perhaps on the threshold
of a grande passion for Daisy Meredith, when his
mother nipped the delicate flower in the bud, and
brought him to London, to fall into the toils of Jane
Brown.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. l6l

There was less talk than usual at dinner. Daisy-
was thoughtful even to sadness. Conrad played the
agreeable rattle while the fish was being eaten, and
fell into preoccupied silence during the rest of the
meal; but not till he had questioned his mother
anxiously about her health.

"I can't understand your staying at home in
such delicious weather, ma'am, unless you were feel-
ing not quite up to the mark- — a chill — a headache
— or something." ■_■ V . ', '. - -'. ' ' :. ■._

"No, I was quite well. But one may tire even
of the Park."

"It's rather like a superior kind of treadmill —
compared with a rush on a motor," said Daisy.

"Never mind, Daisy, you shall have a motor
rush before long. We'll make up a cosy little party
and go to Henley to tea. The Selkirks, and you,
and perhaps Sir Michael and Miss Thelliston. And
my mother might run down by rail and meet us.
Wouldn't that be rather jolly?"

Daisy in a voice of inexpressible sadness replied
that it would be too delightful for words.

Dead Love lias Chains. 1 1

l62 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

The butler handed wines, of Vvhich one glass
was taken by Conrad, and fruit, which nobody would
look at.

"I thought they'd never go!" said Conrad
when the second pair of black silk stockings had
vanished behind the noiselessly closed door, then
turning to his mother eagerly: "Well, you saw
them both, ma'am. You went early, like a brick,
and found them at home. " Come now, what do
you think of them? How about first impres-
sions?"

His manner was gay, but Daisy could see that
he was nervous, apprehensive of he knew not what,
eager, impatient.

"I think Lady Thelliston is a very meretricious
person."

"Patronises the beauty -doctors, supplements
nature wth art? Well, she must have been re-
markably handsome dans le Umps, so there's some
excuse."

"There is no excuse for a lady rouging her
cheeks like a person in the Burlington Arcade."

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. -163

This for Lady Mary was equivalent to a torrent
of bad language from another woman.

Conrad looked surprised, and then laughed.

"Oh, my dear mother, how old-fashioned you
are! Rouging her cheeks! As if modern art
stopped at such primitive measures. Do you think
when middle-age comes upon an attractive woman
she has only to buy herself a pot of rouge and a
hare's-foot. She must have 'beauty-specialists, mas-
sage, electricity, and give her complexion at least
two hours a day of serious toil. It's a mercy if
she doesn't resort to surgery and have her face
flayed and get herself a new complexion. At least
that's what my partners tell me about their aunts.
But let us pass Lady Thelliston, and tell me what
you think of her stepdaughter."

"I saw her only for a few minutes. She is very
handsome, I have no doubt."

"You speak with such an uncertain tone. But
your own eyes beheld her. You must have seen
that she is lovely. Did you ask them to lunch, or

164 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

to dinner? They go out a great deal: but I hope
they could give you a day."

"A verbal invitation, in a ten-minutes' call! My
dear Conrad, that's hardly my way of inviting
people."

"You do not seem to have been very effusive."

"I did what you wished me to do."

"You called upon them — like the Vicar's wife
on a new parishioner. But I want you to make
them your friends — to bring them here. I want
Daisy to be kind to Irene, who is a stranger in
London."

"She won't be long a stranger, if everybody is
raving about her like you," said Daisy.

"When can you ask them to dinner, mother?
Get them to name an early date. It can fit in with
one of your innumerable dinners. The season is half
over, so there is no time to lose."

"Have you seen Sir Michael Thelliston?"

"Not yet. He doesn't show up at dances. I
shall meet him in the Row to-morrow morning.
He's all right — a hero — a. diplomat, a K.C.B. Write

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. I 65

one of your little dainty notes to-night, ma'am, so
that Lady Thelliston may get it at breakfast to-mor-
row."

There was no help for Lady Mary. Conrad
fidgeted about the drawing-room till he had her
seated at her Davenport, writing the invitation,

"I am giving her a choice of two days next
week, and three days the week after."

"Thank you, ma'am. I think she'll choose the
earliest, even if she throws over something good.
She wants to have you for a friend."

"I don't think we can have an idea in common,"
said Lady Mary.

"Oh, but you can tell her about people, teach
her how to steer her bark. A new-comer, an Anglo-
Indian — what a privilege for such an one to know
Lady Mary Harling."

His tone was a caress. He hung over his mother's
chair, delighted at seeing the letter addressed
and sealed. He rang for the servant to get it
posted.

"At once, Thomas, and at the Post-Office."

i66 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"You are going to ride with them to-morrow
morning?" asked Lady Mary.

"To-morrow, and always, till they give me the
cold shoulder. The General rides every day. It
was only a chance that she was alone this morning.
She rode on the north side of the Park to avoid
the crowd."

"And you were with her all the time?"

"She would have found "it difficult to shake me
off."

He was not ashamed of his infatuation. It
was young love, eager, headstrong, determined,
Romeo's love for Juliet, after his heart had bled
for Rosaline; a second love, ardent as the first,
and perhaps no less fatal. To love like that,
suddenly, unquestioning, was to strike the keynote of
a tragedy.

Lady Mary was in a desperate pass. She could
not openly oppose him by refusing to be friendly
with these people. She must diplomatise, and still
hope that the sudden fire would burn out quickly
like a candle in a draught, wasting itself in a pro-

DEAD LOVTi HAS CHAINS. tSj

fligate flame. With her son she must diplomatise;
but with the sin-stained girl who had bewitched him
she could deal plainly and speak straight words.

Her invitation was accepted promptly — for one
of the earlier days. With a sinking heart she
made up her party. A literary man and a soldier,
the soldier young and attractive, would make the
seventh and eighth of a friendly little dinner.
Conrad was glad that they would be so few; and
his mother hoped that her nephew, who was in the
Scots Greys and a general favourite, might prove a
counter attraction for Miss Thelliston, and perhaps
develop that young lady's least winning characteristics.
If, for instance, she were to show herself an incor-
rigible flirt, and so disgust Conrad in the dawn of
love! Lady Mary's policy was Machiavelian and
merciless. She felt that her cause was good, and
fought without compunction.

The dinner was bright and gay, and Lady Mary's
manoeuvre was unsuccessful. Miss Thelliston's be-
haviour was perfect. While she was amiable to
both young men she was familiar with neither,

1 68 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

and she showed herself deeply interested in Daisy
and in all womanly subjects, the pictures on the
walls, the books on the tables, books fresh from the
library, memoirs, letters, travels, philosophy, books
that indicate the superior mind. In her tour of the
rooms with Daisy after dinner, she ignored only one
somewhat conspicuous object, Lady Mary's embroidery
frame, where a solitary poplar showed amid a desert
of tissue paper.

Sir Michael revealed himself to Lady Mary's
anxious gaze as a person of sufficiently dignified
aspect. He was considerably over six feet, very
thin, and very upright; a hard man, with narrow
steel-grey eyes, iron-grey hair cropped close, and a
heavy moustache and beetling brows that were almost
black. Lady Mary suspected a cruel mouth under
that drooping moustache.

Had Miss Thelliston behaved badly. Lady Mary
might have waited, still hoping that the danger would
blow over, but seeing the girl's manners irreproach-
able she felt there was no time to be lost. Such a
love-affair was like a quicksand, and Conrad was

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 1 69

sinking so fast that he would soon be submerged
beyond the hope of rescue. Whatever her power
might be she must use it at once.

She invited Irene to her sofa with a smile, when
the girl had made the round of the pictures and
had said all that could be said about them.

"Please sit by my side for a few minutes, Miss
Thelliston. I want to ask you something."

The delicate colour on the girl's cheek faded ever
so slightly, and her eyes grew grave.

"Oh, I hope you are not going to be serious,"
she said in a very low voice. "Pray let bygones be
bygones."

"I must be serious. I am not going to speak
of the past, at least not more than is absolutely
necessary. But I must speak to you about the
future. Will you come to see me after your ride
to-morrow morning, so that we may have half an
hour's quiet talk together? Will you come to break-
fast at half-past nine?"

"No, I won't break bread with you if you are
going to talk seriously. I know what that means.

170 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

I won't sit at table with you and Miss Meredith
and your son, and pretend to be happy, if I have
that on my mind. I'll come here at eleven o'clock,
if you like. I am my own mistress till luncheon.
Lady Thelliston requires the morning for her com-
plexion."

"Then I shall expect you at eleven. Be assured
I am not going to say anythmg unkind."

"I hope not, Lady Mary. I have had my fill of
unkindness."

She rose and went over to the piano where Daisy
was going to sing with Captain Mansfeld, who was
one of those young men who do things: singing,
amateur acting, lightning portraits, tricks with bil-
liard balls, and a little conjuring.

Professor Wilmer, the man of letters, walked to
the other end of the room in disgust. In a friendly
party of eight he ought to have been the star, and
a monologue from him should have been the only
entertainment; and here were an amateur tenor and
contralto blocking conversation, and spoiling his
evening.

DEAD LOVE HA.S CHAINS, 17 I

The little Dresden clock on the mantelshelf in
Lady Mary's morning -room struck eleven, with
a tiny silvery chime; the clock on the stairs
solemnly repeated the information; and a church
clock, ever so far away, sent the same message
through the summer air, while Lady Mary moved
about the room restlessly, nervous and apprehen-
sive.

"Would the girl keep her appointment?"

She had only three minutes' uncertainty before
the butler announced Miss Thelliston.

Irene was dressed simply and girlishly in a white
frock and white hat with white gloves and sunshade.
A small bunch of pink carnations at her waist-band
was the only touch of colour.

Her clothes would have been simple enough
for a village in the heart of the country, but the
general effect was distinguished, and her morning
face was exquisite, her cheeks flushed with vivid
rose, and her eyes brilliant as if with some great
joy. It was not the countenance Lady Mary ex-

172^ DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

pected to see. Here there was no touch of shame
or of remorse. Yet there was no defiance: only un-
measurable content.

"Will you sit here, by the window. We can talk
quite at our ease. Daisy Meredith has gone for a
walk with the dogs. I want to talk to you seriously^
straight from my heart to your heart."

They were seated side by side on a large low
sofa, that filled Lady Mary's favourite bow window,
a window commanding a peep into Park Lane and
the trees in Hamilton Gardens. There was a silence
of some moments and then Maiy Harling said
gravely :

"I daresay you know that my son admires you.
Miss Thelliston?"

"Yes, I know as much as that."

"It is only natural that he should admire a very
beautiful girl, about whose antecedents he knows
nothing; but I think your own good feeling, your
own good taste, will induce you to do all in your
power to discourage him?"

"But why, Lady Mary?"

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. I 73

"Need you ask me why? He is my son, my only
son, dearer to me than life. Can't you understand
that it would break my heart if he were to marry
any woman upon whose girlhood there was a
stain?" i •• ■,■ ■■■,.. . • ■;

"No, I can't understand. Have you forgotten
your own words that last night on board the
Electra? Some day, you said, a good man might
want me for his wife; and you urged me to tell
him my wretched story, and you told me that if he
was indeed my true lover, he would forgive me, and
take me to his heart, and cherish me for the rest of
my days. That is what you told me, Lady Mary;
so, now I suppose you wish me to tell your son the
story of my life in Cashmere?" - - . . ,

"No, no, I want you to act like a true and
generous woman, and to let my son go. His
fancy has been caught by your beauty. There
can be no depth or seriousness in his feeling for
you. All you have to do is to let him see that
you are not attracted by him, that he is nothing to
you. It must be so easy for you to give up this

174 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

one admirer, since you are lovely enough to have
many suitors, men of high rank in the world, men
who can give you a position that every other woman
will envy."

"You are very kind to promise me such grand
things, but I do not happen to care for them. Your
son loves me with a most enchanting love, and I
would rather be his wife than a duchess, if there
were a duke in my horoscope." '

"Oh, but you must not marry him — you must
not. I won't live to see you married to my
son," Lady Maiy cried vehemently, losing all self-
control.

"What will you <Jo to prevent it? Everything
was settled this morning, and I am engaged to your
son. My father rode alone, for with this interview
hanging over me I did not care for the Row.
Conrad joined my father there, and told him that
he wanted to marry me, and my father brought
him home to breakfast, and after breakfast he
followed me to the drawing-room. Oh, he is
splendid, noble, generous, a king among men! I

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. I 75

don't wonder you are proud of him. We were talk-
ing for a long time, heart to heart, and I promised
to be his wife, and we were both as happy as
mortal creatures can be. Are you going to try to
part us? Will you break the oath you swore upon
your crucifix — you, a good Christian? Will you tell
him my story?"

"No, I can do nothing. It is you who must act.
You have known him less than a month. You can't
really love him."

"Juliet had not known Romeo half a dozen
hours."

"Juliet! Juliet had not surrendered herself to a
profligate, had not borne a profligate's child. Juliet
was not a precocious sinner. I won't have you for
my son's wife. Do you hear, Irene Thelliston? If
I am tongue-tied, it is you who must disillusionise
him. You must do everything that tact and
cleverness can do to cure him of his infatuation
without breaking his heart. That is what you have
to do."

"And I am to marry any man I can catch, the

176 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

highest in the land, so long as I don't marty your
son?"

"You are not to marry my son. He has been
deceived once, cruelly deceived by a girl he thought
pure as snow. He has suffered. He shall not be
deceived a second time. I will do anything — any-
thing to save him from you."

"Will you break your oath?"

"I don't know. I might.be justified even iii
doing that, to save my son from dishonour. You
think your secret is safely hidden; but I tell you no
secret can be kept for ever — least of all the secret
of a woman's shame. Some witness will rise up
against you. The servant who brought you from
India, your child — or the people who have the care
of your child."

"My child only lived a few hours. I had been
too unhappy to bring a new life into the world. My
maid is in Australia. She is an honourable woman,
after her lights, and she swore never to betray me.
She will not break her oath."
■ "And your stepmother? Does not she know?"

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 177

"No one knows but my father. That's why we
hate each other."

"Horrible!"

"Yes, it is horrible. I never look at him
without shuddering at the thought of his contempt.
In the midst of new friends who are kind enough to
make much of me, I look across the crowd, and
see his hard face, the face that has never looked
at me kindly since I so sorely wanted a father's
kindness. He — who has such need of pardon for
his sins against my mother — cannot forgive me.
I am a woman, and there is no pardon for a woman's
sin."

"Your stepmother seems kind to you."

"Yes, she is kind, and I accept her kindness.
There are compromises. I live under the same roof
with her, though she helped to break my mother's
heart. I don't mean that she was my father's
mistress. I should draw the line at that. But I
know that she flirted with him, and kept him dangling
about her when all his time and care ought to have
been given to his dying wife."

Dead Love has Chains. 12

178 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"You must be very unhappy in such a home."

"We don't say too much about home. My father
and his Nvife have made me understand that I am
expected to marry before the end of the season.
She buys me nice clothes, and he has given me her
horse for the Park. The clothes and the horse are
to get me a husband. Even that slip of a house is
more than my father can comfortably afford. He
would be better off in Ireland. I am to marry —
and to marry well. He is enchanted with your son's
offer."

"Your father is a man of the world. Does he
think your Cashmere escapade will never come to
light?"

Lady Mary's irritation had got the better of
her womanly feeling. For the moment she was
merciless.

"Yes. I have no doubt my father believes — as
I do — that Fate will not be so cruel as to hurt me
any more."

"And your lover — the wretch who seduced and
deserted you? Is he dead?"

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. I 79

"I have never heard of his death."

"Suppose you were to meet him by-and-by, as
the wife of a man of position. Don't you think
that would be rather awkward for you and for your
husband?"

"I think not. He showed himself a man of the
world when he went away, and made no sign. If
we were to meet — he would show himself a man
of the world again. I have no fear that he would
betray me."

"Or that he would make love to you? And
how about your own feelings? You must have loved
him desperately when — when you let him spoil your
life."

"You have no right to talk to me like that,"
cried the girl, with sudden vehemence. "What do
you know of such tragedies — you with your smooth
existence, hedged round with conventionalities,
guarded on every side, you who could hardly have
gone wrong if you had been the most vicious of
women? What do you know about me? When I
let him spoil my life! you say — When I let him!

l8o DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

I was seventeen — and I had been educated by the
proper people who never hint that Ufe has dangers,
When I let him! I was in the power of a profligate,
intoxicated with sweet words, with flattered vanity,
told for the first time that I was beautiful, and that
I was beloved. What did I know of love but the
sweetness of it — the love I had read about in Romeo
and Juliet — the love he read of — the love of Haidee
for Juan — oh, so overpoweringly' sweet in the ears of
ignorance. You don't know — you can nfever, never,
never understand!"

"Yes, I think I can. I am sorry for you. I
blame your seducer, and the woman who left you in
his power; the wicked woman who had the fate of a
girl in her keeping, and took no care. I have always
been sorry for you — but I will not let my son marry
you."

"But you promised me a husband; some good
man who would hear my confession and pity me,
and take me to his heart. What kind of a man
was he to be? A village schoolmaster, perhaps,
or a curate, a shopkeeper's son who had won a

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. l8l

scholarship and got himself ordained. Someone
second-class." ^ ..... .i . .

"You shall not marry my son." ; :'..:.:_

"How will you hinder me?"

"By every means in my power — and you may
be sure a mother's intelligence will find the way —
though I may not see it now. You shall not marry
him. I could tell you something about him — that
would scare you, perhaps, and make you glad to
give him up."

"You would tell me that seven years of his
young life were wasted in a mad-house. Do you
think that would frighten me?" :. ;.

"How did you know?"

"He told me this morning, before he asked me
to be his wife. Perhaps even you don't know how
noble he is — how frank, and chivalrous, and true —
a king among men. And can you think that I will
give him up? I have suffered by a man's wicked-
ness, I have drained the cup of sorrow and shame.
I live with a father I hate, and a stepmother I
despise. And when a good man conies to me and

1 82 JDEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

offers me a love that leapt into life the night we
met, strangers in one hour, lovers in the next, do
you think that I am going to let my true love go?"

"If you have any sense of honour you cannot
marry him."

"But I might marry the other man — the curate
■ — or the schoolmaster? Remember what you said
to me. I had only to tell him my story. If the
worst comes to the worst I can tell Conrad."

"And you think he would forgive you?"

"I am sure he would. I should make him
very miserable; it would be a cruel thing to do.
It would take the bloom off our love and our
happiness; but he would not send me away.
I have grown into his heart. He could not do
without me."

She had calmed herself after her burst of passion,
and her face grew radiant as she spoke of her lover.
She paused before the mantelpiece for a moment or
two, while she adjusted her hat, and smiled at the
brilliant reflection.

"He loves me, Lady Mary, and I can make him

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 183

happy," she said. "You had better be kind. Let
the dead bury their dead. Just take time, and think
things over quietly."

She moved towards the door, while Lady Mary
stood with an adamantine countenance and forgot
even to ring the bell. She held out her hand at
parting, but Lady Mary would not take it.

Half-way downstairs she met Conrad, who caught
her in his arms, sui-prised and rapturous.

"My angel! You have been with my mother?
You have told her? I was just going to her. How
sweet of you! — She ought to be delighted."

"She is hardly that — as yet. It is so sudden —
so dreadfully quick — for a mother. But she will
be pleased by-and-by, when she knows me better.
I am going to make you happy, Conrad, oh, so
hapjDy!" ■ ' ■ - •

She let her head sink upon his breast, half
swooning in the sudden reaction from the scene
above-stairs, and he smothered her face with
kisses, and had no memory of a face almost as
lovely that had nestled there and been kissed as

184 PEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS;

fondly by a passionate lad of twenty, eight years
ago.

When does the new love remember the old?

They had the spacioUs landing all to them-
selves just long enough for this little love scene, in
the shelter of tall palms and the cool light filtered
through Venetian shutters; and then an electric
bell rang sharply, the servants were on the alert in
the hall below, and Conrad had to behave with
circumspection as he escorted his sweetheart to the
door and went out with her. That she should walk
alone to Chapel Street, that radiant creature whose
dazzling beauty challenged every eye, would have
been out of the question. He went with her, and
they made a detour by Park Lane and Green Street,
and they talked, as only newly-plighted lovers can,
of a future of ineffable bliss.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 185

CHAPTER VIII.

{ Mary Harling was beaten. She had the ever-
present memoiy of what the doctors had said to
her, that grave warning of peril; and, with the
revelation of her son's impassioned temperament
which every day was brought more vividly before
her mind, she could hardly question the medical
verdict This fine brain was too nearly allied with
the heart to stand the shock of an unhappy love.
The same kind of trouble that had been fatal to
him in his twentieth year might again be fatal;
since in every characteristic, in every feeling and
impulse he seemed no older at eight-and-twenty than
he had been as an undergraduate. It might be
that those years at Roehampton counted for no-
thing, and that he was still in the dawn of man-
hood, eager and impetuous, seeking the blue flower

I 86 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

of joy with a fervour that would not brook dis-
appointment.

Lady Mary felt that her armoury was exhausted.
She had used her strongest weapons, and her
sword had bent in her hand, her gun had missed
fire. The girl had met threats and entreaties with
the same indomitable spirit. The girl meant to
marry her son. No hope remained but in Machia-
velian tactics, and Lady Mary felt that she must
take things quietly, and exert her utmost power of
Machiavelianism.

Conrad's light foot came bounding up the stair
while she still sat before her writing-table discon-
solate, just as she had sunk down when the girl
left her. He dashed into the room, bringing the
breath of summer and youth and happiness wth
him.

"My dear, dear mother! She has told you! She
came herself to tell you. Could anything be sweeter?
Of course she must adore you. She who has no
real mother. You are not going to lose a son. You
are going to gain a daughter."

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. t87

He was on his knees by her chair; he had seized

her cold hand and was kissing it, in a fever of

fiUal love.

"Dear mother, tell me you are pleased."

Ah, what a struggle it cost, the wan smile, the

low murmur.

"I must be content, if my dear son is happy."
"And would you not have chosen her? Is she

not all you would have chosen?"

"I have no choice. I have never thought of
choosing. I only wanted my dearest to be happy."

"And I am going to be happy, divinely happy.
I feel as if this earth I tread on had been changed
to an Olympian cloud. I walk on air! I am
breathless in a rarefied atmosphere. Think what
it is to me, mother, to find this pure and perfect
pearl — after the disillusion of my youth — when
my goddess, my angel, the creature I almost wor-
shipped, was shown to me in a moment — without
a note of warning — as the most worthless of her
.sex — a hypocrite and a liar — a prize-fighter's light

I bo DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

o' love! Can you wonder that my mind gave way
under the shock?"

There was a silence, while Conrad still knelt,
his mother's head bent over him, her arms about
his neck.

Oh, the agony of it; to know that he was again
deceived , that this new angel who brought him in-
effable bliss was a mock angel, and that at any
moment the mask might drop, and he might know
himself again the dupe of second-hand charms. To
know this, and to be unable to undeceive him, con-
strained to silence by so dreadful a fear!

Her oath might perhaps have been as nothing
to her — the sin of perjury might have lain lightly
on her conscience — had it been for his interest to
tell him the cruel truth. But she could not speak
words that would crush him in the dawn of joy, at
the risk of a shattered mind and a life ruined for
ever. Better that he should be happy in his own
way, perhaps never to be undeceived. It might be,
as the girl said, that no witness would ever rise up
against her; and it might be that she loved Conrad

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 1 89

as he deserved to be loved. She vi'ho had so
suffered might love better than the sinless and the
untried. Her affection ought to be so much the
stronger for her gratitude to him who taught her the
divinity of a good man's love. ■ /

"Mother, you are crying! Is that the way you
welcome joyful news?"

"My dearest, there are always two sides to a
question. I want you to be happy — but we have
been all the world to each other, you and I. You
must allow something for a mother's jealousy.
And then I have been thinking of Daisy — poor
Daisy!"

"Why poor? Daisy and Irene will be capital
friends. We shall take Daisy about with us on
the motor. Daisy will have a good time doing
gooseberry." ■ ;

"Will it be quite a good time, do you think?
To be a third, and rather in the way, after the
long rides with you in Hampshhe, the croquet, the
billiards, the time when you devoted yourself to her
all day long, so that I almost thought " i

I go DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"You almost thought I was falHng in love with
her — and I thought so too, ma'am, and one day^
one heavenly May morning when the world
seemed enchanted— I was on the brink of a pro-
posal. We had ridden to the edge of the Forest,
we were in that lonely wood, you know, in the
valley beyond Ringwood, and I felt like a man
under a spell. I was almost drunk with the
rapture of life in that green woodland, under that
azure sky — and Daisy seemed the spirit of the
wood, a most enchanting hamadryad in a neat
little riding-habit. I was nearly gone when I
remembered that au fond my feelings were simply
cousinly, or even brotherly — and that no doubt
Daisy had just the same temperate affection for
me."

"I am not so sure of that, Conrad. I am afraid
your kindness in those happy days at Cranford
may have turned her head a little. She is very
sensitive."

"And she is six-and-twenty — heads don't spin
round easily at that age — and it is only a mother

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. IQI

who believes that every girl in the world must find
her son irresistible. Daisy and I are comrades and
friends, and always will be, if she takes to Irene; as
I feel sure she will."

"My dearest," and again there were signs of
tears.

"Oh, mother, why this dolefulness? Is not my
love a lady, the daughter of a man who has fought
for his country, and won his Sovereign's recognition?
Is not my love fah?" . ■>:.•..,

"Too fair, too fair! Oh, Conrad, can't you
•understand that I am fearful of a love that is
■founded only upon beauty. It fills me with fear
when I see my son the slave of a lovely face.
^Vhat do you know of Miss Thelliston except that
she is beautiful? Your father and I had known
each other for more than a year before he asked
jne to marry him. I knew all about him — his
conduct — his opinions — his religion. I knew that
I was giving myself to a man who would never dis-
appoint me, who would be husband, friend, coun-

192 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

seller, all the world to me; as he was, till death
took him."

The rush of tears that came after those words
seemed natural, and Conrad was not offended.

"Dearest of mothers, yours was an ideal court-
ship in the old-fashioned jog-trot way. But I belong
to a swifter-moving generation, and I yearn for the
poetry of life. Remember how your favourite Shake-
speare said, 'He never loved that loved not at first
sight.' I have no doubt that my father was in love
with you all that year of your acquaintance, though
he was not so impetuous as I am. Come now,
ma'am, let us all be happy. Open your heart to
my sweet love, and every day will make you fonder
of her. By-the-bye, why didn't you ask her to come
back to luncheon? She wouldn't come for my
asking."

"I didn't think of it."

"Oh, but you must make her welcome, ma'am,
you must make her feel that she belongs to us, and
that she is not to stand upon punctilio. I don't. I
told her to tell Lady Thelliston that I was going to

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 1 93

lunch with them, and, by Jove! it's twenty minutes
past one, and they lunch at half-past."

Conrad got up, shook himself, like a dog in
good spirits, and was at the door when his mother
asked :

"Are you going anywhere this afternoon?"

"To Richmond on the Mercedes. Tell Daisy to
be ready at a quarter to four. We shall have
tea at the 'Star.' Will you drive down and join
us?"

"No, dear, it's too far."

"We shall be back in time for a stroll in the
Park. I shall expect to find you there."

He was gone — gone to the new love and the
new life. Come what might, no word nor act of
hers must bring about the ruin of his hopes.

Henceforward Conrad's courtship went on velvet.
Everybody seemed to rejoice in the joy of these
young lovers, since the two persons to whom that
sudden betrothal brought pain instead of joy had
to smoothe their brows and to hide a stricken heart

Dead Love has Chains. 13

194 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

with a smile. It was only when Conrad told Daisy
Meredith of his engagement, and entreated her
warmest regard for his future wife, that she knew
how dear he had become to her, or the dream
she had cherished that she had become dear to
him,

Conrad had been so kind, so cruelly, so fatally
kind in those glad days at Cranford. He had
seemed so completely content with life in her
society, while every day had brought them some
new discovery of mutual tastes, opinions, sym-
pathies, from trivial things, the love of a dog, a
horse, a flower, or some particular phase in the sky,
the earth, the atmosphere, to the highest, the deeply-
felt need of a Personal God, the anxious beUef in
the Hereafter.

In a moment that dream had vanished. He
might still be her friend. In telling her of his new
happiness he had dwelt upon his affection for her,
had urged her to be to his wife as a sister. But
he could never more be as he had been in that
golden May time, the blossoming season of her life,

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 1 95

the season in which Hfe had been more than hfe,
and earth had ceased to be earthy.

Not for worlds would she have appeared dis-
appointed or forlorn. She had that fine feminine
pluck which can look upon the funeral pyre of
love and smile. She played her poor little part
of gooseberry with grace and vivacity. She was
never in the way, and never out of the way when
wanted. She suffered the rush and noise of the
Mercedes, the dust of the roads, the monotony of
afternoon teas, that whether at Richmond, or Esher,
or Wimbledon, or Windsor, were always the image
of each other.

She talked when she was wanted to talk, and
was always absorbed in the landscape when the
lovers began to whisper confidences, those mysterious
confidences which engaged young men and maidens
have to impart to each other. She did all that
the situation demanded, with a face that beamed
with intelligence, and a heart heavier than lead.
The shabby house at Holloway, the bickering
parents, the slovenly parlour- maid, would have

13*

ig6 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

seemed a haven of peace, but she was too proud
to fly. Someone might get an inkhng of her
secret, if she were to show the faintest distaste for
her sickening office. Happily for her there was a
hmit to her martyrdom, for the wedding was to
take place in August; Sir Michael and his future
son-in-law being of one opinion as to the needless-
ness of delay, while Irene had consented readily to
an early marriage.

"If we were to be engaged for years I could not
trust you more than I do now," she told her lover.
"I know how good you are. I know how happy we
are going to be."

That was the song she sang to him in all those
joyous days. They were going to be happy. She
was going to make him happy. It was the string
she harped upon on love's mystical lyre.

Material arrangements are easy when the suitor
has thirty thousand a year. Lady Mary insisted
upon giving up Cranford; but she would of course
retain the house in Hertford Street, which was
hers for life. Conrad and Irene had the joy of

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 1 97

house-hunting among their other pleasures; and
house-hunting, when rent is no object, is as joyous
a business as it is weary and wearing for small
purses. Even in this Daisy had to assist, scaling
four-storey staircases in Hill Street and Charles
Street, and Green Street, and Norfolk Street, till
after days of exploration a small house was dis-
covered in Park Lane, which was the situation Irene
had desired from the first.

After the discovery of the ideal house there came
consultations and fierce discussions with the ideal
architect — that is to say, the architect at the top
of the mode that season, who was something of
an autocrat, and wanted his own way about every
detail; so that at last Conrad had to remind him
that it was he and his wife who would have to live
in the house, and that however perfect it might be
as a work of art, it would be hard lines if they did
not like it. .

When, however, this famous artist sent in draw-
ings of the house as it was to be after he had
worked his will upon it, the blue windows and

■iq8 dead love has chains.

pale pink walls, and delicate touches of water-
colour, had such a Ruskinesque effect that Irene
was all for letting the architect have a free hand,
and finally it was agreed that he should alter and
bedevil the house, until nothing but the mere shell
of the original structure would remain, that which
had been kitchen becoming wine-cellar, and servants'
bedrooms being transformed into kitchens, all inner
walls on the first and second floor being removed,
leaving vast spaces where there had been small
rooms, and ceilings supported by steel girders and a
pilaster or two.

Daisy told Lady Mary that she liked the original
telescopic drawing-rooms better, the positive, com-
parative, and superlative, expanding from a boudoir
not much bigger than a powder closet at the back
of the house, through a smallish middle room, to a
somewhat spacious drawing-room with three French
windows opening on a balcony. The Early Victorian
balcony was to disappear, and the three windows
were to become one, stone-mullioned, mediaeval,
with a deep window seat, and leaded casements to

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 1 99

let in the rain. There was to be nothing more re-
cent than the period of Francis the First and Diane
de Poictiers.

This transmogrification would take time, and the
house would not be ready till next season.

Sir Michael and Lady Thelliston went to
Hampshire in the Panhard with the lovers, to
see the place which was to be their daughter's
country home; and all things were admired and
approved. Irene had not Daisy's way of looking
at horses and dogs, nor did she walk straight into
the hearts of the Irish setters, as Daisy had done;
but she admired the fine old quadrangle of red
brick and stone, where stables and saddle-rooms,
and coach-houses and grooms' quarters were digni-
fied by the spaciousness of the enclosure, and the
stone basin round which the pigeons clustered, where
there had been a fountain that had not played
within the memory of man. She admired the large
rooms, the broad oak balusters and carved newels of

200 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

the staircase, the grandeur and spaciousness every-
where.

"Is this really to be my house?" she said, with
a glad little laugh that Conrad thought enchanting.

They lunched in the large dining-room where
the round table looked like an island in an ocean
of Turkey carpet. They were a cosy party of
four, Daisy not being required on this occasion;
and it mattered nothing to Conrad -that his future
father-in-law had a cold, cruel face, or that his
future mother-in-law's complexion was a curious
and instructive spectacle in the clear light of a July
noontide. Conrad knew nothing, he cared for
nothing, save the girl by whose side he was sitting,
and whose slender grace as she moved about the
rooms that were to be her own had enthralled him.
They had roamed over the house, hand in hand,
exploring rooms and corridors, looking at family
portraits, from Lawrence to Buckner, the first Harling
of any importance having been painted by the former
master.

"Ours isn't a long pedigree," Conrad said,

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 20I

laughing. "We only date from Sir Thomas Law-
rence."

"Ah, but on your mother's side."

"Oh, the Duke's family tree begins with King
Stephen's armour-bearer, and the family is as rusty
as the armour that hangs in the Castle hall."

Irene was enthusiastic about the billiard-room
and library, with a door of communication.

"I shall sit here and read after dinner, while
you and your friends play," she said, looking at the
shelves, where every book she had ever heard of or
desired seemed to be waiting for her, books having
been one of Mr. Harling's vanities, exquisite books in
exquisite bindings.

The trousseau was a business that occupied
many mornings. Sir Michael being too much a
man of the world to hold his hand when his
daughter was marrying thirty thousand a year, and
when her settlement was to be exceptionally generous,
nothing asked from the bride's people, and every-
thing given. Irene herself showed indifference about

202 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

her wedding clothes, rare in any young woman,
rarer perhaps in an old woman. She allowed her
stepmother and the dressmaker to choose and settle
everything, only stipulating that most of her frocks
should be white, and that her trousseau should be
planned with a view to foreign travel rather than to
display at home.

"We shall be wandering about the world till
next season," she told Madame Herminie, "and I
shall go to any queer wild places my husband wants
to see; so you must give me no useless finery." But
when the suave and expensive Herminie heard of a
winter in Egypt, she protested that madam would
want more evening frocks and smarter evening coats
than if she were staying in London.

Irene shrugged her shoulders disdainfully.

"I am not going to parties at huge hotels," she
said. "I am going to live in a felucca or under
canvas with my husband."

My husband! The word charmed her. She
had never dreamed of this joyous love, never
hoped to be so honoured and so cherished, she

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. JQJ

who had suffered the dull despair of a young life
that has no fair outlook. Fate had been good to
her after all.

Only one thing troubled Conrad in this joyous
time, and that was a certain want of cordiality be-
tween his mother and the girl of his heart. In vulgar
parlance, these two whom he loved best in the world
did not take to each other.

Lady Mary was courteous, and Irene was un-
failing in all proper marks of respect for the lady's
age and position; but there were no signs of grow-
ing intimacy, still less of affection.

"I thought you would be so fond of my
mother," he said one day, with almost a note of re-
proach.

"I shall be fond of her when she is fond of
me," Irene answered, "but that has to come.
Perhaps when we have been married a year or
two, and I have made you happy, the ice will
melt."

"Women are inscrutable. I made sure that

204 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

you would love each other. She never had a
daughter, and you who loved your mother so
dearly "

"Dearly, dearly, dearly. Don't speak of her.
Don't make me think of her, and her last days
upon this earth, when I counted every breath she
drew, hung upon every word — faint words — at long
intervals — and when I knew that each word might
be the last."

He caught her to his heart. He kissed away her
tears. Never, never would he again invoke a memory
that grieved her.

"My mother v/ill adore you by-and-by," he said,
and then in a lower voice he asked: "Can you guess
when she will love you best?"

He whispered the answer to his own question.
"When our first-born child is laid in her arms."

Irene's head drooped lower on his breast, and
the lips that were hidden from him were mute. She
clung to him in silence, and he felt the hurried beat-
ing of her heart, and knew he had distressed her,
but could not understand why.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 20$

Conrad never spoke to her again about her
relations with his mother, comforting himself with
the assurance that intimacy and affection would
come in good time. Irene had spoken words of
wisdom. His mother would love the woman who
gave happiness to her son. Perhaps such close re-
lations must always begin mth a little aversion, or
at least with some distrust.

After her terrible interview with Lady Mary,
Irene had resolved never to bend her neck before
a woman who had so outraged her pride of woman-
hood. Whatever love or kindness was to come
in the future should come unsought. She would
never plead m /orma pauperis, never take the
lower ground of acknowledged guilt. Strong in
Conrad's love she would defy the world. She had
brought her father to her feet, after years of un-
kindness. He fawned upon her, he praised and
admired her, and made believe that no cloud had
ever crossed her sky. He even talked freely be-
fore Conrad of her life in Ireland, hidden m a
rustic village, with an aunt who worshipped her.

206 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Nobody had ever told him of any such worship.
The idea was spontaneous.

Lady Mary wondered at the girl's calm front,
and perhaps, in her heart of hearts, admired her for
being so quietly defiant, so self-assured and reso-
lute. The calmness under deeply agitating con-
ditions indicated good blood, was indeed as much
a sign and token of race as her small feet and
delicate hands, and all those other 'marks of re-
finement in her beautiful person. A girl of mean
birth would have trembled and cringed.

And so the summer days went by, fleet and
sweet as summer days can be when people are
ineffably happy. The lovers were rarely parted
between early morning in the Row and the small
hours after a ball, except in the inevitable time
which the least vain of young women must sacri-
fice to the exigencies of London clothes. First
came the morning ride, and after breakfast a walk
or shopping; and then luncheon in Chapel Street,
or perhaps one of Lady Mary's luncheon parties,
which she could not desist from giving all at once.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 207

She had, indeed, to do more entertaining now that
her son was engaged to be married.

In the afternoons there were long jaunts in one
of the motors, and on opera nights there was an
early dinner in Hertford Street, and an evening
in Lady Mary's capacious box; and there were
occasional dinner parties, and dances almost every
night, dances to which the pretty Miss Thelliston
was always bidden, dances with chaperons, and
friendly little dances without chaperons, so that
scarcely a night passed in that enchanting July
when Conrad's arms were not encircling his be-
trothed in the waltz they both loved, and in which
they both excelled.

Then there were the suburban races, Sandown
and Kempton, to which Conrad carried Irene and
his cousin, with some agreeable youth or middle-
aged swain to make a fourth and amuse Daisy.
Captain Mansfeld was the favourite, as he was keen
on racing, and knew the lineage and previous per-
formances of every horse, and the merits and pe-
culiarities of every jockey.

208 DEAD LOVE HAS CPIAINS.

It was one Saturday afternoon at Sandown,
under tropical sunshine, in the mob of over-
powering frocks and hats, and more or less attrac-
tive faces, that they met a man who had achieved
a momentary distinction by the purchase of a
famous Derby winner, and by the success of one
of his own horses at the Newmarket First Spring
meeting. He had a horse running at Sandown
this afternoon, and had that pecuhar air of sup-
pressed agitation common to owners when their
luck trembles in the balance, and in this condition,
with eyes brightened as with fever, and a certain
over- alertness of movement and manner, he ran
against Captain Mansfeld, who was walking with
Daisy Meredith, while Conrad and Irene sauntered
after them. It was still early in the afternoon, and
the most important race was yet to come.

The man had a loud voice, resonant, and not
unmelodious, and they could hear every word as
they approached. It was all about his horse, and
the chances for and against.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 209

He was a large man, tall and broad-shouldered,
handsome, commanding of aspect, a man who
looked as if he had once been a soldier, well set up
still, but a little out of training. Idleness and high
living had set their mark upon the magnificent
figure, and the face was one upon which high
thinking had never been expressed. It was perfect
from the sculptor's point of view, but the beauty
was purely physical, the type suggestive of the arena
and not of the forum.

"Come round and look at Horoscope before
they saddle him: if Miss Meredith is fond of horses
she'll appreciate his good looks," he was saying,
having in a manner forced Mansfeld to introduce
him to the young lady; and then as Conrad and
his sweetheart approached, he turned and met them
face to face.

He looked at Irene with a surprise that was
instantaneous, and then with an expectant look that
obliged her to recognise him. She bowed, ever so
slightly, and walked on, quickening her pace, with.

Dead Love has Chains, 1 4

2IO DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

her large white sunshade lowered a little, so that
her face was hidden.

"Do you know that man?" asked Conrad, with
a lover's jealous distrust of any stranger who pre-
sumes to claim acquaintance with the beloved.

"I met him years ago in India."

"Is he a friend of Sir Michael's?"

"No. I don't think my father knows him."

"But you met him?"

"It was in Cashmere; he was a friend of ray
cousin's."

"Was he in the army?"

"Yes, he was in the Grenadiers. But he had
left the army and was travelling — for his amuse-
ment."

"Wouldn't have him in the Guards perhaps;
he doesn't look their sort."

"What is the matter with him?"

"Something indefinite — something I don't want
to put into plain words. Some men are born so,
men whose blood is of the deepest blue, and whose
ancestors were fine gentlemen in the first Crusade."

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 2 I I

"You condemn him on rather slight evidence —
never having even talked to him."

"I heard him talk just now; bragging about his
horse, wanting my cousin to go and look at the
brute. Out of his own mouth he has condemned
himself."

"I'm sorry your cousin had to suffer the burden
of his acquaintance."

There had been no change in Irene's voice or
manner as she talked of the man, not the faintest
sign of fear or distress; yet this chance meeting
was one of the dark moments of life. She felt
the hand of fate upon her. She had hugged her-
self with the assurance that she would never see
that face again, never hear again the voice that
had once charmed her. To-day she saw him as
Conrad saw him — with a deep disgust. Handsome?
Yes! Splendid as common clay unillumined by soul
can be — an earth-man, in whom there was no sign
of the immortal mind.

She wondered if he had changed utterly from
the man she had once loved — the man to whom

2 12 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

she gave her childish admiration, her childish trust,
the man who had pursued her with a passionate
insistance from the hour when her eyes first looked
up at him with a schoolgirl's innocent admiration of
a magnificent being, the typical Guardsman of the
romantic novel.

She had been able to control voice and manner,
but she could not command her colour; and pre-
sently when they were sitting at tea, and she could
no longer shelter herself under her parasol, Conrad
exclaimed at her pallor. She had been walking in
the sun. It was his fault. He was as much dis-
tressed as if he had taken her unawares throiigh a
plague-stricken city. He was sure that her head
ached, that she was almost fainting. All her pro-
testations to the contrary were useless.

■ He looked appealingly at Daisy. What had
better to be done? Should they go home directly
after tea? Perhaps he could find a doctor who would
prescribe something. He could run to a chemist at
Esher to get a prescription made up. He looked as
troubled as if death were in the air.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 213

Irene protested that she had no headache.

"Please let us sit quietly somewhere, out of the
sun. That is all I want. Perhaps Daisy will sit
with me in some shady corner while you and Cap-
tain Mansfeld look at the race."

"As if I should leave you!" cried Conrad re-
proachfully.

"I give you my word I am not going to
die," said Irene, with a silvery laugh that was re-
assuring.

He told Mansfeld and Daisy to go and amuse
themselves, and to be at the gate ready for the
drive home, at a quarter to seven; and then he went
off with Irene, away from the race-course and the
crowd, to stroll on Esher Common.

It v/as Irene who suggested the Common.

"It will be a relief to be away from all those
frocks and hats," she said, "if you don't mind not
seeing the race."

"As if I should mind: as if I wanted to see
anything in the world except your face! When that
looks pale and wan my world collapses. You gave

2 14 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

me a scare just now, Irene; but a little bit of pink
has come back; just the ghost of your morning
colour, when we meet in the Park and I say to my-
self: here comes my rose of June."

They were to dine at Hertford Street at half-
past seven, as it was an opera night, Don Giovanni,
the old music they both adored, having that un-
educated love of music which must be sustained
with melody.

Irene was in beauty again when they met the
other two at the gate.

"A pity you lost the race," said Mansfeld.
"There was some fine riding, and Middlemore's horse
won by half a length.

"Middlemore?"

"The owner of the favourite. The man who
was talking to me when you and Miss Thellistoa
joined us."

"Oh, is that his name? Irene knew him in
Cashmere; at least, he was an acquaintance of her
cousin's. Not a very desirable acquaintance, I should

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 215

think. But if he's a friend of yours I've nothing to
say against him."

"I don't think there is anything to be said
against him — except that he wasn't popular in his
regiment. His father was a manufacturer some-
where in the north — and Middlemore had plenty of
money when he was in the regiment, and I believe
he spent it royally."

"But if his money is gone how does he come by
a racing stable?"

"Oh, his father is rich enough to keep him
going. He's an only son, and he married an
American girl — a millionaire's orphan daughter
from Boston, very refined and nice — but not hand-
some."

"Was she with him to-day?"

"No. She crossed the Atlantic in her coffin last
March — to lie in the family vault with her New
England ancestors."

This was while they waited for the motor. There
was not much more talk after they had taken their
seats, and Conrad had his mind and his hands

2l6 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

occupied in steering through the crowd of carriage
people who hated motors, and motor people who
hated other motors; no time for more than an oc-
casional word to the two girls sitting behind him,
muffled in their white cloaks and veils, no oppor-
tunity for any confidences till the Mercedes stopped
before the white door in Chapel Street and Irene
alighted.

"Only a quarter of an hour to dress," said
Conrad, as he handed her out. "I shall send the
motor back for you."

"Please don't trouble. I can have a cab."

"Too slow. My mother is a dragon of punc-
tuality."

Irene was nearly as white as her chiffon frock
when she appeared in Lady Mary's drawing-room
— and again Conrad protested that it was his fault
for having kept her on the lawn in the glaring
sunshine. She had struggled against that deadly
faintness during her hurried toilet, the maid doing
everything that her own active hands usually did,
and dressing her as if she had been a doll. She

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 217

dared not look at herself in the glass, A great
dread had come upon her since she had known that
Henry Middlemore was free.

She talked gaily enough to satisfy her lover
while they were at dinner, and afterwards at the
opera when the curtain was down. Him she
might deceive, but she saw Lady Mary watching
her with an uneasy expression. She who was in
the secret of the past no doubt divined that a
worse trouble than a walk in the afternoon sun
had blanched that perfect face. Happily there
was no dance that Saturday night, nowhere to go
after the opera, which was over early. Sir Michael
and his wife were dining out, and had not come
home when Lady Mary's landau brought Irene to
her door, and her lover murmured his last fond
words at parting.

"No Row to-morrow; but you would not be well
enough to ride if it were a lawful day. I shall call
early to ask about you — but you mustn't come
down to breakfast or go and sit in a stifling church.
If you have rested and are well enough for a stroll

2l8 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

in Hamilton Gardens at one o'clock, I will get my
aunt's key. You shan't be stared at and pointed at
in the Park."

"Pray don't keep Lady Mary waiting."

She was glad when the door closed upon him.
His tenderness could not comfort her. All around
her was dark. She felt as if she had suddenly be-
come blind, and must grope her way among un-
known obstacles.

There was a letter lying on the hall-table, a thick
letter with a large staring scarlet seal, like a gout of
blood, she thought.

The servant picked it up and carried it to her
on a salver, as she went towards the staircase.

"A messenger brought it, ma'am, after ten
o'clock."

She had divined, without seeing the address, that
it was for her.

A carriage stopped at the door as she ran up-
stairs, and she heard her father's voice in the hall
before she could get into her room. The dinner
party had been later than usual, and no one but

DEAX) LOVE I^S CHAINS. 2ig

the servants had seen the letter. She locked her
door to keep out the French maid who was Lady
Thelliston's servant, and who had very little respite
from her assistance in those elaborate arts which
maintain fictitious beauty. What scanty leisure she
had was at Miss Thelliston's service, and she was
called a joint maid. ■•:"..:.

Irene switched on the light and flung herself
into a chair by the open window to read her letter.
She knew the hand, too well, too well. How many
surreptitious scraps of notes had been secretly
delivered — in her book — in her fan — in the loop
of a sash — in a bunch of tropical flowers? Dear,
dear letters they had been to her in those foolish
days, before the knowledge of evil. Letters telling
her she had looked lovelier than ever at the ball last
night — had danced divinely — in a word that she
was adorable.

"Oh, that delicious pink frock! You were like
Venus in a rosy cloud. I think there is something
of that sort in Virgil." ' -

2 20 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Adorable, adorable, adorable! The scraps of
bold manly writing all sang the same song: all told
her she was lovely and beloved, and all pleaded
for more intimate moments — a walk in the com-
pound in the moonlight — a tete-a-tete ride — some
sweet solitude of two that was to be managed some-
how; some evasion of her chaperon, some escape
from the crowd. His brain was fertile in expedients.
He was always telling her how to elude' the people
whose duty it was to take care of her, always teach-
ing her how to deceive.

Those little scraps of praise and love had been
very dear, for it was thrilling to the inexperienced
girl to know herself the central point of a strong
man's thoughts, the absorbing interest of his life — to
be told of sleepless nights spent in thinking of her,
of days that were pain and grief because they had
to be spent away from her.

And now the same strong penmanship was a
thing of horror, a thing that recalled the folly, the
degradation of that miserable past.

Every word in that long letter was like a drop

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 221

of molten lead, for to her the letter might mean
doom. • : • . ; . ;: , ' . •.

"My darling,

"I have spent a weary hour hunting for your
address. The beautiful Miss Thelliston! That's
what people call you. I had heard of the beauti-
ful Miss Thelliston; but I had actually forgotten
your surname, and it never occurred to me that
this much-admired she was my Haidee, my child-
wife, the only girl I ever loved with the whole force
and passion of my soul. Ah, dearest child, you
cannot have forgotten the night when I lay at
your feet, and would have gladly died there
rather than take up the burden of life with another
woman.

"But I had to take up my burden. The fragile
creature to whom I had pledged myself would
have died if I had forsaken her. Those who knew
her best, the aunt who had brought her up, the
cousin who was like a sister, had warned me that
to her sensitive nature disillusion would be fatal.

222 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

It was not her fortune that tempted me, for my
expectations from my father made me careless of
that.

"I had to choose between my divine girl and
the woman older than me by a year, who believed
in me and depended upon me for the happiness
of her life. Irene would soon forget the romantic
dream of an Indian summer, a fairy tale of the
hills and rose gardens; but my Boston sweetheart
would not forget. She had given me the deep love
of a thoughtful self-contained woman. I could not
cheat her.

"She was a dear and devoted wife, and I think
she was happy with me. She never knew that she
was not the first and only woman who had ever
held my heart. She died in my arms after a year
of troubled health, during which I did everything
that care and science could do to keep her alive.
She left me rich and childless, firee to begin life
again — but with very little interest in anything ex-
cept my racing stud — which had amused and pleased
her — and in a rubber at Bridge.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 22^

"Then in a moment your face flashed upon me,
and I knew that life was worth living. I am free,
dearest, I am a free man now. The times are
changed since that day when I stood before your
cousin feeling like a beaten hound, pretending that
I had thought of you only as an enchanting child,
the sweet companion of an idle day — you — you —
the girl I adored, my Haidee, my bride! Well, it
was hard lines for us both; but we have a long
life of happiness waiting for us, a life that will make
amends. You are still in the dawn of girlhood,
very little older than in those wild days, and ever
so much lovelier. I am not by any means an old
fogey, and to have you for my own will make me
young again.

"Dearest, let it be soon. Every day will seem
an age till I have you in my arms, my own till
death. We can be married quietly, and just slip
away to Italy on our way to India, and that
romantic valley where we met. Think how delicious
it would be to revisit the place where we were so
happy, to wander once again in those enchanting

2 24 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

scenes where we first knew the rapture of mutual
love.

"For my own part I think it will save all
troublesome explanations if we keep everything
dark till after we are safely married, and have left
England. You can meet me in the Park some
morning, and we can be married by special license
at the least frequented church in your parish; but
if, on the other hand, you prefer to tell your father
that you are going to marry me, having known and
liked me years ago as a chance acquaintance in
Cashmere, he will naturally inquire about my means.
In that case you can tell him I can afford to make
a liberal settlement, and that I feel sure I can
satisfy him. My wife left me all her fortune, in-
cluding her property in Yorkshire — an estate bought
soon after our marriage — big farms and substantial
homesteads, a fine park and a picturesque Jacobean
house, which I know my Irene will love — as she will
love the horses that have been my one extravagance
of late years. But my bright bird shall never be
caged in her country home an hour longer than she

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 225

is supremely happy there. She shall have all the
world to roam over at her own sweet will, with a
husband whose delight will be to please her. Let
me have a letter to-morrow morning by a messenger.
This hotel is not half a mile from your house.

"Your devoted
' ■:■ ■■■- ,., . "Hal.

"Saturday niglit. '

"The Carlton Hotel."

This was his letter. This was the offer that he
made in good faith, never for a moment doubting
her acceptance. She belonged to him by that
shameful past, that past of which he could wi^ite
so lightly, halving known only the sweetness of it.
One bad half hour with her chaperon; one pas-
sionate outbreak of remorse, in the dead of the
Indian night; just a few curses and groans and tears;
and his price had been paid. He loved and he
rode away. The light love was forgotten perhaps,
and had only revived at sight of her, a new fancy,
selfish, impetuous, as the old passion.

And her year of ignominy and suffering, that

Dead Lcvp ha^ Chains. • 5

226 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS,

unhappy time in which she hardly dared to Uft her
eyes before the few people who came to her aunt's
house, the priest, the parson, the hunting squire
and his wife and daughters. Her aunt's friends
were not many; but she hated them all. Her pride
grew fiercer in that secret humiliation. No one
knew, no one was ever to know! Her aunt, Mrs.
Fitzpatrick, was a resolute managing woman, but
not unkind, not without compassion. The youth
of the victim weighed with her. The father had
thought chiefly, or solely, of the disgrace, the
trouble, and inconvenience for himself. His sister
could pity the girl whose innocence had been the
cause of her fall.

Irene's health had broken down soon after her
arrival in Ireland, and she had been ill enough
to be kept in seclusion, waited on and nursed by
her aunt, till the hour of her trial drew near, and
then aunt and niece went unattended to an obscure
sea-side village in the West, more than a hundred
miles from Mrs. Fitzpatrick's home; and here, though
the aunt gave her own name, the niece was de-

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS, 2 27

scribed as Mrs. Brown, whose husband was soldiering
in India.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick's air of impeccable respectability,
a certain authoritativeness that argued social status,
left no room for question. The landlady was de-
lighted to have such lodgers at the end of the season,
when her usual tenants were gone.

To-night, sitting with her hands clasped above
her head, and Henry Middlemore's letter before her,
Irene lived over that dreadful time. Imagination
brought back the moaning of the Atlantic in the
long sleepless nights, while she thought of what her
Ufa was to be as the mother of a nameless child.
Love had died the death between the night of
agonised farewell and these hours of weary waiting.
And when her aunt, sitting by her bed in the deep
of night — when she felt in her utter weakness as if
she were drifting upon a sluggish river, drifting to
darkness and ease — told her very gently that her
child was dead, and that her secret and her shame
had died with him, she had neither the sorrow of a

15*

2 20 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

woman with the maternal instinct, nor the thankful-
ness of a worldling.

She thought and hoped that she too would soon
be dead, and that she had come to the last link
in the chain of misery. Had he not made her
suffer, this man, who wrote so glibly, and offered
her the delight of revisiting the scenes fraught with
such bitter memories? What of happiness had she
ever known from the night they parted, till she met
Conrad Harling, and knew the meaning of a good
man's love? Her dearest, her truest, most generous,
most chivalrous of men, in whose large heart no
taint of self-love had ever entered!

And was she to surrender that noble lover, to
give herself to the man whose sensual passion had
blighted her life, the unscrupulous seducer, who
could not respect the innocence of a girl just escaped
from a school where evil things were unknown, where
every book and every lesson, every allusion to the
outer world, was chosen with a studious reverence
for youthful purity.

This man must be answered. She knew how

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 229

impatient, how persistent he could be, how in that
brief time when she had begun to fear him, with
some instinctive prescience of her danger, he had
pursued every advantage, seized upon every op-
portunity of that unconventional life, how he had
hunted and waylaid her. He would have to be an-
swered, and at once.

She was long writing that answer, though her
letter was brief. The church clocks struck two be-
fore she had addressed and sealed it.

"The past is past," she began. "It was more
dreadful to me than you can ever know. 1 have
only one favour to ask. Forget me, as I have
tried to forget you. I am going to marry a man
whom I dearly love, and I know that you are too
honourable, and I hope you are too kind, to
come between me and that great happiness. Let
the dead bury their dead. I have never reproached
you. I have never breathed your name to anyone
belonging to me. No one knows how cruel you
were to a helpless girl. No one will ever know
from my lips. Perhaps you think it would be a

2;^0 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

kind of reparation if you were to marry me; but
believe me there is only one reparation in your
power, and that is to be a stranger to me for the
rest of our lives."

There was no signature. Her penmanship would
be sufficient evidence against her should he be
wicked enough to show her letter to anyone who
knew her; but that was a depth of infamy of which
she could not suppose him capable. Reparation!
That was what his letter meant. Their marriage was
to make everything happy; and that miserable past
was to be thought of as a fairy tale of girlish love,
a memory of days that had been sweet, to be dwelt
upon in sentimental moments amidst the security of
married life.

This was the man she ought to marry, this man
whose coarse mind could conceive no shame in the
remembrance of sin. She was bound to him by that
shameful past. He had the right to claim her. He
was the only man upon earth to whom she could go
as a bride without dishonour.

She could realise this stern truth, and yet

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 2^1

reject his offer, resolved to give herself only to the
man she loved: her preux chevalier, her Phcebus
Apollo, radiant in the glory of enchanting youth,
frank, joyous, a creature made for happiness, made
to be adored. She had discovered a likeness in
Conrad's clear-cut Greek features to the Belvedere
Apollo. He had the same outlook, his head had
the same poise. And he loved her with a passion
as pure as it was strong, loved her with the
love that sees something of divinity in the chosen
wife.

It was four o'clock before she fell asleep, and
then sleep was worse than waking, for Henry
Middlemore's image was mixed with the trouble of
her dreams.

When the maid brought the morning tea she
sent her to Lady Thelliston to say that she had a
bad headache and would not leave her room till
after church-time.

She would get up at about eleven o'clock, she
told the maid, and would want no help in dressing,
after her clothes were put out; the white crepe frock.

2;^2 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

the pansy toque, and so forth. If Mr. Hading
called, he was to be told she would be in the
drawing-room at a quarter to one ready to go for a
walk. And then she drank her tea, and lay down
again, trying to compose herself, trying to bring the
colour back to her pallid cheeks, the brightness to
her haggard eyes. She badly wanted to sleep, she
longed to sink into the gulf of oblivion, the darkness
where memory and pain are not.

That deep oblivion would not come at her
bidding, only fitful snatches of slumber, with
intervals of restlessness, fretful movements, re-
bellion against fate. Had she not suffered enough?
Had she not a right to be happy after those
quenching fires, that heavy price paid for sin?
Duty! Truth! Honour! Those were mere words
when weighed in the balance against happiness
and love. She knew that, if she kept her secret,
she could make Conrad happy. She knew that
to tell him the story of her fall would be to make
him miserable, perhaps to plunge him again into
the darkness of that living death of the lunatic

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 2^^

asylum, he whose exuberant nature was made for
the glory of life, made to be happy and to diffuse
gladness.

Conrad's card was lying on the hall-table when
she went downstairs at twelve o'clock, and crept out
of the house to post her letter. A messenger was of
course impossible. The man must wait till Monday
morning for her answer.

He would be angry no doubt, surprised and in-
dignant at her refusal, but she did not think he
would try to injure her.

There was a pillar-post a few doors off, and
her absence had lasted less than five minutes.
The footman looked surprised when he opened
the door for her, no one having heard her go
out.

• "Mr. Harling called at nine o'clock to inquire for
you, ma'am. Brixham gave him your message, and
he said he would be here soon after twelve."

She had only been just in time with her letter.
Conrad appeared before she had been in the drawing-
room five minutes, enchanted to find her waiting for

2 34 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

him, ready for their Sunday-morning walk, full of
solicitude about her health, needing to be assured
that she had quite recovered from the headache that
his folly had caused.

They went to Hamilton Gardens, Conrad re-
joicing in the little bit of solitude they might
have before people came out of church, Irene's
share of the conversation being performed very
feebly. She had seen Henry MiddlemOre on the
other side of the way as they crossed Hill Street,
and she thought that he might be going to the
house to make some inquiry about her, after being
disappointed of a letter in the morning. Oh, the
horror of it all, if he were going to dog her foot-
steps, to haunt her, to hunt her down! She had
tried to believe it was impossible that he should
persecute her, that he must have some generous
feeling, some touch of remorse that would induce
him to spare her, when once he realised that her
love was dead, that another and a better love had
come into its place. He knew nothing yet, and no
doubt was acting upon the presumption that she still

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 235

loved him, and would forgive eveiything for love's
sake.

And then there was something else that he did
not know; the slow fire of shame, the shame that
had burnt into her heart and brain, and had killed
love.

She was glad when the gate closed behind them,
and they were walking in the exclusive Eden, where
the few could escape from the many.

"I want to talk of something very serious,"
Conrad said, and seeing her sudden, scared look:
"My dearest, don't be frightened. It isn't anything
gloomy or horrid. I want you to fix our wedding
day. We are always talking about it as coming
soon, and I know your frocks are being made, but
we have been vague so far. Let it be soon, love,
very soon!"

They were alone in the shelter of the trees, and
he could even venture to slip his arm through hers,
and draw her a little nearer to him, his ear on the
alert for approaching footsteps.

"When shall it be, love?"

236 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"You must settle that with my stepmother. I'm
afraid she'll want to make a fuss and invite people
— my father's friends — most of them soldiers. Let
it be as soon as she likes. I want to belong to you,
Conrad. I want to be sure that we are bound to
each other for life."

He was enraptured at her speech, the most direct
avowal of love he had ever had from her.

"My sweet girl, you have filled my cup of bliss.
I'll talk to Lady Thelliston after lunch. She can
order the invitation cards to-morrow morning. They
ought to be ready in twenty-four hours; and a fort-
night's invitation will be enough."

"Wedding invitations are generally much longer."

"That's only to give people time to buy presents.
We don't want candlesticks or paper-knives, do
we?"

"What can I want? You have loaded me with
lovely things."

"Nothing half lovely enough. The jewellers have
no new ideas. They can only offer one something
that they made last week for a duchess or a countess.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS, 237

They have no new departures. One must go to
Italy for an idea," ...

They walked in the gardens till half-past one,
no longer in blissful solitude, but meeting people
they knew every five minutes. They were on the
way back to Chapel Street, when in the little street
by Dorchester House they came into a group of
people, and stopped to talk, and while Conrad was
monopolised by a loquacious dowager, Irene found
Henry Middlemore at her side. She had not seen
him coming, did not know where he had sprung
from,

"I hope you haven't forgotten me, Miss Thellis-
ton," he said, offering his hand, and then he went
on in a much lower voice: "No letter! If you knew
how I am devoured by impatience!"

"I posted my answer an hour ago."

"Cruel! I sha'n't get it till to-morrow. An
eternity!"

People were talking all round her, yet she was

238 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

in an agony lest Conrad should hear. She broke in
upon the dowager's discourse.

"We shall be very late for luncheon," she
said.

Middlemore lifted his hat and went away, but
those few words, his persistence in talking to her
when she was among people, had given her an agony
of fear. The chattering group dispersed.

"There was no escape from that woman," Con-
rad said. "That was the man we met yesterday,
wasn't it? The man whose horse won?"
"Yes."

"What a presuming cad to talk to you."
She did not answer him. She walked by his
side in dull silence. Middlemore's persistence filled
her with dread. He had waited for her while she
was in the gardens, watched and followed her when
she came out. Despair came upon her suddenly
as she realised her peril. A word, a look, from
this man might awaken Conrad's suspicions. He
would question her, drive her to distraction, force
her to prevaricate and to lie; and doubt once

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 239

awakened, the fierce suspicion of jealous love, he
would not rest till he had dragged her secret from
her, would not be appeased till the veil was rent
from that disgraceful story, and he knew her for the
thing she was.

And then to be thrown off and abandoned, to
see the warm fond lover turned into a man of stone,
cruel to himself as to her, inflexible even in his
despair. She had learnt to know his way of think-
ing, all his opinions, prejudices, beliefs; and she
knew that an unvirtuous woman was hateful in
his eyes. She had watched his countenance when
improper people had been discussed in his presence,
lightly, with a smoothing over of hard facts, and she
knew that in his mind there was no indulgence
for sin. His chivalrous ideas about women were
allied with a severity as of the seventeenth century
Puritans.

She hardly knew how she lived through the rest
of the day. She dined at home, and went with
Lady Thelliston to a rather prim evening-party
where she was to meet Conrad and his mother.

240 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

She tried to avoid Lady Mary, feeling that those
keen clear eyes would read her trouble, might
even divine the cause, and know that her first lover
had come back into her life.

She heard two men talking of him as the owner
of yesterday's winner.

"Not half a bad fellow — very popular in his own
part of the country — an invaUd wife — died at Cannes
last winter. They want him to take the hounds
next season — plenty of money."

And then the conversation changed and she
heard no more of him.

It was a dull party, though there were three
or four well-known politicians and more than one
artistic and literary celebrity in the little crowd.
There was no music, and by a quarter-past eleven
everybody had gone on, or had gone home. Conrad
had hardly left Irene's side, and she had tried to
talk lightly and to seem gay. He told her of his
satisfactory conversation with her stepmother. The
wedding invitations were to be ordered next morn-

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 24 I

ing, and sent out on Wednesday — a ten days' in-
vitation.

"And now you have only to make up your mind
about the honeymoon. Where shall we go? To
what secluded nook in Switzerland — or on the
Italian side of Montblanc, and then down into
Italy, to Locano, Baveno, Stresa. To be together
and alone in that divine country! Think what
bliss!"

All this was spoken in confidential tones while
they sat under an awning on the balcony in a
thicket of palms.

He was radiant with the assurance of happiness,
expectant of a life without a cloud. He asked
about the bridesmaids. Had she chosen them,
and how many? Daisy, of course, must be one of
them. '

"My stepmother insisted upon six brides-
maids — girls whose mothers were her brides-
maids. She knows crowds of people. I know
she has asked your cousin, and Miss Meredith
has kindly consented to be one of the six. My

Dead Love has Chains. 1 6

242 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

father and I would have Uked a quiet wedding
— ^just one bridesmaid — but I suppose Lady Mary
would think that kind of thing rather discredit-
able."

"Oh, I daresay she will approve of Lady Thel-
liston's plans. She will like a little fuss. But
if I could marry you to-morrow morning in the
quietest church in London — some dear old City
church — St. Andrew's, Holborn, for instance, and
whisk you off to Lucerne in the Engadine Ex-
press, I should think myself the most blessed of
men."

She sat by his side in silence, with a heart of
ice, remembering how that other man had pleaded
for a quiet wedding, and a swift flight to fairer
scenes, to that unutterably beautiful world, the
valley girt round with snow-mountains where they
had met and loved and parted.

She let her hand lie in Conrad's, and he bent
down and kissed it in the shadow of the palms.
The beautiful head with the short crisp brown hair
bent down to worship her, and while he worshipped

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 243

there was another man claiming her as if by an in-
defeasible right. ....,,■,

She rode in the Park with her father and Con-
rad next morning, rejoicing in her Arab's freshness
and the gallop that brought the colour back to
her cheeks. Between Stanhope Gate and the Row
she had time to think what an escape it would be
if she could bring about an accident, make her
horse bolt with her and break his neck and hers
over the railings. She remembered a favourite
novel in which she had read of such a catastrophe,
and how in the story sudden death had solved a
problem, as it might solve the problem of her life.
If she were killed that morning Conrad would never
know, ■ '

His mother would not break her oath. Lady

Mary would be content to know that he was released

from the bond she hated; and Death would cancel

Henry Middlemore's claim.

Conrad reproached her for riding wildly.

16*

244 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"If you ride with such a loose rein I shall be
afraid to let you ride to hounds," he said.

He had talked to her of the hunting next year,
and that he naight take the hounds perhaps, by-and-
by. They were to winter in Egypt; but there might
be a chance of some good sport in March, when they
went home.

Home! The word had been sweet in her ears;
but now there was the blackness of impenetrable
night round her, dread, and almost despair.

There was a letter lying on the hall-table when
she went in, exactly like the last, a conspicuous
letter with a big vermilion seal, delivered by
hand.

"Who's your correspondent?" her father asked
sharply, as she took up the letter.

"Oh, it's nothing of importance."

"Is it a bill?"

"No; only a circular."

She ran upstairs before he could ask any more
questions, and shut herself in her room.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. ..245

■ Fler frock was laid out on the bed, and Justine
would be engaged with Lady Thelliston for the
next two hours. She was safe in her seclusion
till eleven o'clock, when Daisy was to call for
her, and they were to go together to the people
who were making her trousseau, and who had to be
kept up to time. ■ . ■ ■

This was the letter she had to read, she who
ardently desired to know herself bound to Conrad
Harling through life and till death. Within less
than a fortnight of the day appointed for her
wedding she had to read this letter and consider all
that it meant:

"Your letter, just to hand, is a thunderbolt.
I suppose I had no right to expect that you would
remain free; and indeed when we parted, when
I left you with an aching heart to fulfil an engage-
ment from which I saw no escape, I told myself
that I hoped you would meet with someone better
worthy of your love, that you would make a happy
marriage, and that all we had been to each other

246 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

would seem to you no more than the memory of a
dream. Could I think otherwise in that dark
day when I was leaving you, as I thought, for ever,
to keep faith with the woman to whom I had
bound myself before I had ever seen your love-com-
pelling face.

"But now that there is no barrier to our happi-
ness, now that the one desire of my heart and
mind is to call you wife, it seems to me impossible
that any other man can stand between us. Re-
member what you have been to me, and ask your-
self if you can refuse to be mine, now that Pro-
vidence has put it in our power to cancel all that
was unfortunate in the past by the most solemn,
the most sacred of bonds. Can you for an instant
contemplate giving yourself to another man while
I am here to remind you of my claim, I who am
the only man living who has any right over you?
What power of choice can you have in such circum-
stances? Can I believe that you will call another
man husband and deny yourself to me, whose over-
mastering passion brought shipwreck upon us both,

DEAD LOV^E HAS CHAINS. I247

when you were a child in ignorance of evil, a woman
Only in the power to love.

"Oh, my divine girl, think of those days, think
of all we were to each other, my Haidee, so lovely
and so innocent. I was a wretch to hazard the
sweet enchantment of those hours, a wretch not
to fly temptation, not to leave you while you
could still remember me without pain. But if I
made you unhappy then I can give you a life of
devotion in atonement for my sin. Do not try to
cheat me. Do not imagine that I \vill forego my
right to make you my wife, without needless delay.
In the face of your letter, I shall not rest till you
are legally mine. I shall apply for the special license
to-day, and shall leave this hotel and take rooms in
your parish.

"Yours and yours only till death us do part, ' '

.. :| l:^-:' ■'■■■. i .... ■■■:■" ' ■ . ' ' ■' '' ' " H. M."

All the more determined phrases were heavily
underscored. From the first words to the last
the letter was a menace. She remembered the

248 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

tyranny of his love in the days when she had
loved him. She was then at the age when a girl
adores a tyrant. His determined pursuit of her had
been the charm that worked to such fatal issues.
To be pursued, to be worshipped! It was the
school-girl's dream of bliss. But now, with this
letter in her hand, remembering what he had
been, a deadly fear took hold of her. He had been
her master then, when she loved him. He was her
master now, when she hated him. How could she
have hoped that he would be generous, that he
would stand out of her way and let her take her own
road to happiness?

How could she have hoped that pity, or honour,
would seal his lips, when he wanted to marry
her? Self was his god and his law. She knew that
now, recalling details remembered though not under-
stood in those foolish hours, before she had acquired
wisdom in the school of misery.

He would have no mercy.

What could she do? She dared not defy him.
She had told him that love was dead, and he had

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 'Z^g

ignored that plea. He wanted her. He would
make her liis bond slave, and would laugh at the
power of a rival. He would make her marry
him. There was the sickening dread that froze
her. She saw herself at his mercy. If she per-
sisted in refusing him he would fight for her with
the most odious weapons, would tell her lover all
that the cruellest speech could tell of her sin-
stained girlhood. She would stand before her
preux chevalier, the man who worshipped her, a lost
creature.

She had told Lady Mary that Conrad would
cleave to her, even if he heard her story. The
disillusion might go near to break his heart, but
he would not forsake her. He would take her,
degraded, humiliated, changed utterly from the
goddess he had worshipped, and would pardon
and pity her. But love and life would be changed;
and she told herself that she could not live
under the burden of his pity, she could not live
with him and be happy, conscious of the change
in his feelings. Better — better anything — than to be

250 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

his wife, knowing that she had forfeited his respect,
that he was sorry for her, and sorry for himself as
her liusband.

What was she to do? She had no hour in the
day that she could call her own, no power to go
the length of Chapel Street without accounting
for her moments. Her stepmother was too self-
absorbed to be formidable; but she had an idea
that her father suspected her, that those cold cruel
eyes followed and watched her. He had looked
at her keenly when he questioned her about that
dreadful letter — so obviously 7iot a tradesman's
circular.

She was like a hunted stag at bay, the cry of the
pack gaining on her. She had no time to think,
no time to map out her course. An imperative
message had come from her father before she had
taken off her riding clothes; he was at breakfast and
wanted to see her. It was her daily task to pour
out his coffee, and to pretend they were on excellent
terms, a model father and daughter. He was a man
who loved shams.

DEAD LO\T, HAS CHAIN'S. 25 1

At eleven Daisy came for her in Lady Mary's
victoria, and she was driven to Dover Street to
spend a weary hour trying on garments of every
description — her wedding dress — her clothes for
Italy — and her clothes for Egypt. Conrad was
pacing the street, waiting for them to come out
and join him, and then they were to go and walk
in the Park by the sumptuous flower-beds, while
the driving people and the riding people and the
walking people went by them like figures in a
cinematograph. To Irene on that miserable day
nothing in the world seemed real except her own
despair. A few yards from the Stanhope Gate
she saw Henry Middlemore standing with his back
to the railings watching them. She looked straight
before her, and went on talking to Daisy, pretending
not to see him.

. ' "That man haunts us," Conrad said, when they
had passed. .

"What man?"

"The owner of Horoscope. Didn*t you see him?"

"No."

252 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

She managed to post a letter to Middlemore
that afternoon — hiding it between other letters
and dropping it into a pillar box before Conrad's
eyes, as they walked through Esher, where the
Mercedes had carried them to take tea in an inn
garden, Daisy and Professor Wilmer for their
companions, the Professor attaching himself to
Daisy in a dull persistent way, like a learned
barnacle. He was never weary of expounding
his views about the universe for her edification, and
he had told her incidentally that he would like to
marry her.

Conrad was to dine in Chapel Street, and to
meet his betrothed at two dances.

Her letter to Middlemore was brief:

"If you will walk in the Park, by the flower-beds,
between Stanhope and Grosvenor Gate, to-morrow
morning at half-past six, I will try to join you for a
quarter of an hour. There is no use in any more
letter-writing."

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 253

That was all; no signature, no address.

Such an appointment was a desperate thing;
but she thought it would be safe at that early
hour. No servant would come downstairs before
seven, and she would only have to unbolt the street
door and go out. Her father came down at eight
for his morning ride. She could be back at the
house at a quarter-past seven, in time to put on her
habit. The servants could do no more than wonder.
They might think she had gone out for an early
walk wdth her fiance.

The second and more delightful of the two
dances did not begin to languish till after three
o'clock, when Lady Thelliston declared herself
absolutely worn out, a fact confirmed by the
damaged state of her complexion, and insisted on
carrying off her stepdaughter, in spite of Conrad's
petition for one more "extra." Irene had been
paramount in beauty, crowned with the factitious
interest of approaching nuptials, all other girls

2 54 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

curious about her, and most of them indined to
depreciate her charms, and to consider Mr. Hading
much too good for her.

"No doubt she was very pretty, in a certain
style of her own — rather Uke Lady Hamilton in
Romney's pictures; and, well, everybody knew
what kind of person his famous sitter was. Quite
a Romney beauty! And she had dropped from
the skies last June. She had no connexions about
the Court. The King had asked who she was in
a tone that implied a great deal. She had not
even been presented on this side of the Irish
Channel. She was going to be after her marriage.
The father was a soldier, but no one had heard of
him till that West African affair the other day.
The mother — or stepmother — was too odious for
words. In point of fact, they had no connexions
whatever, that anybody knew of. They were quite
new people, and they were living in a squeezy little
house in Chapel Street, quite impossible for enter-
taining."

In such phrases did the faded and the partner-

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 255

less express their poor opinion of Irene and her
people.

The sky was sunless and grey, and there was a
chilliness in the air when Irene stole out of the
house soon after six o'clock to keep her appoint-
ment with Middlemore. Her endeavour to sleep
in the daylight and amidst the sound of awakening
birds and early traffic had been vain. Two and
a half hours of restlessness had made her more
tired than when she left the dance, and she had
that strange vague feeling of not being more than
half alive which comes from sleepless nights and
the strain of hidden trouble. From Saturday
afternoon till Tuesday morning her brain had been
working at an eighty horse-power, not an hour's
natural sleep, not a minute's respite from torturing
thoughts in her waking hours, not even when she
was waltzing with her lover in the flower-scented
ball-room, gliding round in an elysium of music and
light, his strong arm encircling her, his kind eyes
watching her face with ineffable love. No, there

256 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

had been no pause in the torment of the labouring
brain. What was she to do? Was there any hope,
any way of escape from the doom she loathed: to
part from the man she loved, to give herself to the
man she hated?

Now in the chill grey morning, past the awaken-
ing flowers, she was hurrying to meet the hated
lover, to fight her last battle for freedom, and
make her last appeal to the tyrant. The cool air
revived her, and that dream-like feeling of not
being quite conscious of existence, which amounted
almost to the loss of identity, left her in the fresh-
ness of the morning.

It was not a quarter past six when she went
into the Park, but Middlemore was there before
her, a few yards from Grosvenor Gate. She saw
the tall figure, broad and stalwart, coming towards
her with a swinging step, on the solitary path.
There was no one else within sight. They had the
Park to themselves.

He almost ran to meet her, and before she could
speak he was holding her in his arms, and his kisses

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 257

were on her face, the kisses of love that will not be
denied. She gave a cry of despair, and struggled
to escape, but the strong arms held her close. She
felt like some wild thing that had fallen into a
trap,

"My angel, how sweet of you to come," he said,
with his lips on her face.

She went on struggling impotently. Her cheeks,
that had been white when she met him, were flam-
ing with angry fire.

"Let me go," she gasped. "You don't know
how I hate you."

"No, no, if you hated me you would not have
come. No, no, it is love that brings my Haidee to
my arms."

He saw people coming — a sauntering policeman
— a groom exercising a horse, and released her
from that fierce embrace, and slipped his arm
through hers, and led her across the road to the
turf under the trees, where they might walk unseen.
She was trembling violently, and the weakness of
strained nerves made her helpless.

Dead Love has Chains. IJ

258 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"Let me sit down, or I shall faint," she said,
and he took her to a bench and seated her by his
side, with his arm round her. He took off her hat
and made her rest her head against his shoulder,
and held her as a man holds a woman who is his
own. There was a rough tenderness in all he did,
a tenderness that had been enchanting in the old
days, when the glamour of unknown love held her
spell-bound and at his mercy.

"I came to you to tell you that I mean to marry
Conrad Harling," she said, when she could com-
mand her voice.

"Not while I live — not while I live. You are
my wife in the sight of God. You must wait till
you are my widow if you want to marry any other
man."

"No, I am not your wife. I owe you nothing.
You have not the shadow of a right over me. You
left me to my misery, to my shame."

She burst into tears, and hid her face in her
hands, sobbing violently. The loosely rolled -up
hair fell over her neck and shoulders. Middlemore

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 259

sat for a minute in deep thought; then with ex-
treme tenderness, with hands that caressed the
lovely tresses, he bound them into a knot and
gathered up the scattered combs and made her head
look neat again. .' . .

"You spoke of shame," he said in a low voice.
"What shame could there be — except in my sweet
girl's tender conscience?"

"There was shame — bitter shame — a year of
shame. It was a year after you forsook me — be-
fore I could go into the light of day without shrink-
ing from every eye — hating my fellow-creatures
— a year before I left my sick bed — a wreck! Ah,
if you had seen me then you would not have wanted
me. Such a wasted sickly creature would have no
attraction for you."

He hardly heard what she said. He took her
to his breast again with irresistible force.

"My beloved girl — I never dreamt — I never

for a moment contemplated Oh, what a brute

I was! But you told me nothing — you never hinted

at your trouble. How could I think that you would

17*

26o DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS,

have kept such a secret? Our child! Oh, how I
shall adore — how I shall worship my Haidee's child
— son or daughter! How divine a gift! Where —
where have you hidden our child?"

"In the grave," she answered. "He did not live
through the day."

"My angel! My suffering angel! But we have
life before us; and we are going to be happy.
And could you think of marrying another man —
you, the mother of my son? It was a shameful
thought."

There was a change in his accent, as he spoke
those words, a change to absolute severity.

"It was a shameful thought."

That was this man's opinion; and how about
the other man whom she adored — her preux
chevalier? If she could defy Middlemore and marry
Conrad Harling, might not the day come when he
would tell her that it was a shameful thought, a
shameful act that had given her to his arms?
Would love excuse her? Would beauty win his
pardon, beauty disfigured by sin?

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 26 1

No, she could not marry Conrad. She could
not face the possibility of his anger, his grief, his
killing contempt.

Perhaps she had known from the moment when
Henry Middlemore took her in his arms that the
battle was lost.

She had come into the cool grey morning,
braced with angry resolution, prepared to fight
a desperate battle, determined to win. But he
had given her no chance of fighting. She was his
prey. He had taken possession of her. He had
held it unquestionable that she must be his. The
old tyranny subjugated her, something there might
be perhaps of the old magnetism, when the lightest
touch of that strong hand, trembling as it stirred
the lilies upon her breast, had thrilled her with girl-
hood's unquestioning love.

She knew that the battle was lost. After her
passion of sobs she sat looking straight before her,
with tearless eyes, conquered — despairing.

"I suppose you would be sorry if I were to kill
myself," she said at last, in a low toneless voice.

262 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"No, no; you will not kill yourself. You bore
that year of martyrdom, my poor dove. Why
should you want to die now when you have a
happy life before you? You think you are in
love with this Harling fellow, but that's skittles!
He is younger than I am, altogether more attrac-
tive, I daresay; but I am the man you loved when
first your heart knew what love meant. I am the
man you will love till your dying day."

She made no fight. She sat mute and defeated,
and let him dictate to her.

"We can be married at nine o'clock to-moiTOw
morning. You have only to slip out of your house
at half-past eight. I shall be in the street watching
for you. Don't trouble about bag or baggage. I
will get all you can want for a few weeks — and
after that no doubt your people will send your
things. They may make a fuss at first; but when
they find you have married a man of good means
they'll come round like a shot."

A clock struck seven.

"I must go home," she said, putting on her hat.

DEAD LOVE. HAS CHAINS. 363-

She did not look at him, or answer him. She
neither assented nor refused. She made no protest,
except for a long agonised sigh. She was beaten.

He walked with her till they were within sight
of the flowery balconies, holding her arm all the
way. She felt his love sustaining her, dominating
her as in the past. She knew that it was real love
of its kind; violent, tyrannical, exacting, but
real. She knew that he was ready to fight for her,
to do wild and desperate things rather than let
her go.

A housemaid opened the door and stared at her
in blank surprise.

"I have been walking in the Park to cure my
headache," she explained. "Tell Clarkson to let
the groom know that my horse won't be wanted,
and he can tell Sir Michael that I am not going to
ride this morning."

She flung herself upon the bed, beaten, beaten!
She felt as if the beating had been not only moral
but physical. Heart and limbs were aching. She

264 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

wanted to lie upon the ground, face downwards, and
never get up again. Middlemore had trodden her
into the dust.

She did not leave her room that day. She
refused to see Conrad. She sent him a line in
pencil to tell him she was tired to death after the
ball, and must take a day's rest. He ruslted off to
an eminent nerve-doctor who lived within a stone's-
throw, and gave himself no peace till that authority
had seen the beloved patient, and could assure him
that there was nothing seriously amiss, only nervous
prostration, requiring seclusion and repose. An affair
of a day or two.

That was all; but for Conrad the world was
empty. He hardly knew how to get through the
day. His only relief was in talking to Daisy
about the wedding — asking trivial questions about
the frocks, about the bridesmaids, about the bride's
luggage.

"Shall we go and look at her trunks?" he asked,
as if proposing a treat, and he straightway carried
the submissive Daisy to the trunk-makers, where he

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 265

gloated over the great dress-box, the hat-boxes and
bags, the cabin trunk for the voyage to Alexandria.
They were to be finished off in a hurry, with her
initials I. H., and a four-leaved shamrock by way of
badge on sides and lid.

"Lady Thelliston is to find her a good maid,"
said Conrad. "The poor darling has had only a
half share in her stepmother's slavey up to now."

"Judging by Lady Thelliston's complexion it
would be more like a sixteenth," said Daisy.

Conrad rode with the General next morning.
Irene was under the doctor's orders to keep her
room.

"She has been doing too much," Sir Michael
said. "Girls are simply insatiable. My poor wife
is worn out. I heard them come in on Monday
night, I should say Tuesday morning, a few minutes
to four."

Conrad talked of Irene all the time. Would
Sir Michael send her Arab to Cranford, where the
stud groom would take particular care of him, in
a loose box, with his shoes off, till the spring, when

2 66 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

they came home from Egypt. She should have
her Arabs there, and revel in the desert rides, the
delicious mornings, the charm and wonder of that
land of strange gods.

"Curious to think how we humdrum English
have taken possession of it after all these cen-
turies," he said, "and how we carry all our paltry
modern luxuries, our fine clothes and .snobbism,
to the land that was old when Herodotus wrote
about it."

He breakfasted with his mother and Daisy.
He was restless and yet dull, as if that severance
of twenty-four hours had been too much for his
nerves. Lady Mary watched him anxiously. She
felt as if there were thunder in the air. She had
noted the change in Irene's manner on Sunday.
And now the girl's nervous breakdown puzzled her,
while the hurrying on of the wedding was a blow.
It killed the remnant of hope, that slowly dwindling
hope she had cherished from the beginning of Con-
rad's engagement, the hope that something would

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. ^07 _

happen, and that her son would be saved from that
unholy union.

She had submitted to the inevitable. She had
been tolerant, and had put on a show of kindness
in her intercourse with Irene; but the memory of
that night on board the Electra, the shock of the
girl's confession, had never been out of her mind
since the hour she knew this girl was to be her
son's wife.

Conrad had called in Chapel Street before break-
fast, carrying a tribute of hot-house flowers for Irene,
with an eight -page letter WTitten after midnight.
He told his mother of this visit while they were at
breakfast.

"She won't leave her room till the doctor has
seen her," he said; "but I know she'd like to see
you, Daisy, if you will go and look her up."

"And you want me to tell you how she looks,
and what she says. If she is quite a wreck after
being a day under the weather; if she has cried her-
self blind at being parted from you," Daisy said,

268" DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

laughing at him, full of kindness, resigned to the
certainty that he was to pass out of her life alto-
gether in a few days.

"Tell her I shall call before lunch to hear what
the doctor has said, and if I may take her into the
country in the afternoon. We might go to Brighton,
and give her a breath of sea air, and be back by
nine o'clock for dinner."

He went off to his den at the back of the house,
carrying the Times with him, and totally incapable
of reading it.

They had sat at breakfast longer than usual, and
it was ten o'clock when Lady Mary went to her
morning-room.

"You can go to Chapel Street before you come
for my letters," she told Daisy. "There is no-
thing very important this morning/' whereupon
Daisy went off meekly to put on her hat and to
go and worship at the shrine of the strange
goddess.

She passed the Thellistons' footman on the way,
walking towards Hertford Street, and the butler who

DEAD LOV^E HAS CHAINS, 26g

opened the door had a certain discomposure in his
looks.

Miss ThelHston was not at home.

"Then she is better, I hope," said Daisy, "if she
has really gone out." , ' , '^

"Yes," the man assured her. Miss Thelliston
had gone out early, a few minutes after Sir Michael
started for his ride.

Daisy retraced her steps, wondering greatly.

Conrad came out of his den and met her in the
hall.

"Back already? They would not let you see
her?" he asked excitedly.

"She was not at home." •

"Not at home? Nonsense!"

"The butler said so."

He snatched up his hat, and hurried out of the
house.

A letter had been taken to Lady Mary five
minutes before — a letter carried by the footman
Daisy had met on her way to Chapel Street.

2 70 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

"Tuesday night.

"You have won, Lady Mary. I am beaten in
my battle for life and love; but not by you.

"Fate has been too cruel. The man you know
of has come back to me, free to make me his wife,
and he has compelled me to marry him.

"There is no help for me. I have fought hard,
but he has conquered me. We are to be married
early to-morrow morning. We are to leave England
to-morrow night. I go to him with a broken heart.
I can never love him, never respect him, never hope
for happiness with him, remembering what Conrad
has been to me, my noble lover, my king of men.
Ah, you can never know how I have loved your son,
or how happy I could have made him, with an ador-
ing wife's devotion, obedience, unchanging fidelity, if
fate had let me.

"I have had to succumb. If I were to persist
in refusing Henry Middlemore, some dreadful thing
would happen. It is best that I should be the
sacrifice. I deserve nothing better.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 27 1

"I thought that he had gone out of my Hfe for
ever, that he was no more to me than the memory
of a bad dream. But I met him at Sandown on
Saturday, and from that hour I have had no
peace. ,-(:;••

"You tried to shame me into giving up your son,
and you failed. Henry Middlemore has shamed me
into marrying him; and your son has escaped.

"Will you break this news to him, and be
merciful to me, and keep the secret which you
swore never to betray, on your crucifix? I do
not think you could ever look upon that sacred
image without dread if you were to break that oath.
Never let him know of that dark stain upon my
life. Never let him know that he has been twice
the dupe of a pretty face. But, indeed, I hope at
my worst I am better than the Innkeeper's daughter,
for, at least, I have loved him fondly and dis-
interestedly, and I would have married him had he
been a beggar, and would have been proud to call
him husband.

"Have pity upon me now, Lady Mary, as you

272 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

had that night on the Electra, for I am in as deep
a pit of shame and sorrow.

"Irene Thelliston."

Lady Mary sat staring into vacancy, with the
girl's open letter on the table before her. He
had escaped. The union she had dreaded and
loathed, the union of honour with dishonour, was
not to be. He had escaped this danger; but
could she dare to be glad, while that other and
even worse peril threatened him? The peril of
a mind overthrown by a sudden, overwhelming
grief.

She knew how he loved this girl. She had
seen the self- surrender, the total absorption of his
whole being, in that young love. She knew that
from the night of the ball, from the hour when he
had held the lovely girl in his arms, from their
first waltz, from their first interchange of trivial
talk, sitting among the palms and flowers in the
half light of a winter garden, he had existed only
to adore her. Irene had become his world, and

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 273

there was nothing else worth living for. Restless,
silent, pre-occupied in her absence, he woke to
radiant life when she appeared. The light stereo-
typed amusements of each day had become Elysian
joys. Only to be with her had made the dull earth
fairy-land.

And now he was to be told that his goddess
had been stolen from him — that the creature who
was so soon to have been his own, his o^vn for life,
had been taken from him for ever.

Would it mend matters to tell him that she was
worthless, that to marry her would have been a
calamity? No; the revelation would only give a
sharper edge to his grief, the agony of knowing that
he had been fooled for the second time in his life.

He burst into the room while Lady Mary sat
looking at the tree -tops and the blue summer sky
with unseeing eyes.

"Mother, a letter has been brought to you —
Irene's letter. What does it mean? She is gone —
no one knows where! It's maddening! Give me
her letter."

Dead Love has Chains. 1 8

274 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

He would have snatched the open letter from
under his mother's hand, but she spread her hand
over it, holding it on the table.

"No, no; you are not to read her letter."

A despatch-box stood open on the table in
front of her. She threw the letter into it and
put down the lid, which fastened with a spring
lock. Then turning to her son, she put her arms
round his neck and drew his face down against her
own.

"My dearest son, be brave! Try to bear the
heaviest blow you have ever had. If you could
know how I love you, how my life is bound up in
you, I think you would be brave for my sake."

"Where has she gone? Why? Why?"

He was white to the lips, and his voice was
hoarse and dull. And then, to his mother's horror,
he burst suddenly into a laugh.

"She was like the publican's daughter, I suppose.
There is someone she liked better — some great
coarse brute who knew how to master her."

He remembered the man at Sandown, the man

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 275

who had talked to Irene at the corner of Stanhope
Street on Sunday — the man he had seen leaning
against the Park rails on Monday morning.

"She has gone off with that fellow? That's
what's the matter. Can't you speak?" he cried
furiously.

"She was married early this morning — to Mr.
Middlemore. It is not a happy marriage, Conrad.
You have more reason to pity her than to blame
her."

"Pity her, yes, I must pity her, pity her for

breaking my heart, for making me hate the world

I live in — and all human kind — except you. I'll

make that one exception, mother, though you did

me the biggest wrong you could do when you

brought me into this vile world. This world of

lovely faces and black hearts. Black, black as

Erebus. Oh, how I loved her! How I trusted

in her love! And she was to make me happy!

That was the burden of her song: 'I mean to make

you happy.' And she let me fix our wedding-day

— last Sunday. She melted into my arms, and

i8*

276 DEAD L0\^ HAS CHAINS.

sighed, and said it could not be too soon. At that
moment she was as utterly mine as wedded wife
ever was. Mine by the beating of her heart, by
the lips that trembled as I kissed them. And she
has married that coarse brute — a creature of thews
and sinews, a face flushed with high living. Do you
say that they are married — now, now, as we stand
here?"

"They were married early this morning, and they
are to leave England to-night. Conrad, my idolised
son, only tell me that you will show yourself a
strong man — strong in moral force "

"You mean that I will grin and bear it — take
my licking a little better than I did before. Don't
be frightened, mother. I am not going back to
Roehampton. She has killed the gladness of my
life; but I won't let her kill mind and memory — if
I can help it. I won't bring trouble upon you again
— if I can help it."

He went out of the room after these words, and
Lady Mary did not follow him. She must let him
fight his own battle. He had taken the blow a

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 277

little better than she had hoped, but his ghastly
pallor and the strained look in his eyes had ap-
palled her. The warning of the doctors was ever
present in her mind.

"Don't let him be disappointed a second time."
The disappointment had come, by no act of
hers; and he had to bear the blow, and live
through the agony of it as best he could. She
knew that she could do nothing to help him. The
maternal heart might ache for him, but a mother's
affection could not heal the wounds a fatal love
had made. All attempts at consolation would be
but a repetition of phrases that would fall upon the
sensitive brain like the measured water-drops in the
torture chamber.

278 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

CHAPTER IX.

Conrad went straight to Chapel Street, where
he found Sir Michael Thelliston in the den behind
the dining-room, a place where he kept his boots
and the scanty literature of the establishment.

"Oh, my dear Harling, I was just going to Hert-
ford Street — my dear, dear fellow!"

"I suppose you know why she has done this
thing?"

"My dear fellow, I know no more — hardly any-
thing more — than you do yourself."

"Oh, but you must. She must have been in
love with this man. She would not jilt me a fort-
night before our wedding-day if there were not some
kmd of tie between her and this man. She must
have been in love with him when they met in
Cashmere — and then they lost sight of each other, I
suppose; and last Saturday he came back into her

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 279

life, and whistled, as he would have whistled for his
dog — and she went after him."

"She may have cared for him, perhaps — in
Cashmere. I was not there with her. My niece
told me that Irene was greatly admired. She was
not eighteen, just out of the school-room; but my
niece said she was turning heads; and this — this
Middlemore was among her admirers."

"Is that all you can tell me?"

"Yes, that's about all."

"And her stepmother, does she know no more
than this?"

"She knows nothing. She is horribly upset, as
I am. I was proud of my girl's engagement to you,
proud of such a son-in-law. It is a diabolical stroke
of fate. I know nothing of this man; he may be
the biggest brute in England."

"Did she write to you?"

"Only a line to say that she was to be married
this morning at nine o'clock, at St. Nectern's, to
Henry Middlemore, The letter was brought by a

280 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

messenger, after ten o'clock. I went round to the
church, but the doors were shut."

"Well, she has made her choice. I thought
she loved me; but it seems I am easily deceived.
God knows I loved her. Good-bye, Sir Michael.
You have always been kind to me; but you can
understand that I sha'n't care to see anyone belong-
ing to her."

"No, no; I can easily understand. You have
been cruelly wronged. I am ashamed of her. I
am deeply distressed. There is a box in her room
that is to be sent to you. She has packed all your
splendid presents in it."

"Damn the presents! Do you think I want to
see those again?"

"But they must be restored to you. That is
unavoidable."

The General went with him to the hall door,
and wrung his hand at parting, and then went sigh-
ing back to his den.

"Fool! Fool!" he muttered. "Thirty thousand a
year, and a man who was her slave."

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 28 1

He had found Middlemore's name in the red
book.

"Henry Middlemore, late Grenadier Guards,
D.L., J.P., of Danewood Park, York; Clubs, Reform,
Turf."

Conrad went to St. Nectern's, and unearthed a

verger, who let him see the marriage register. There

was the latest entry, the commonplace statement of

a commonplace fact.

"Henry Middlemore, widower.
Irene Thelliston, spinster."

The witnesses were John Jobling, verger, and
Sarah Blake, pew-opener.

He went to his club and he sat in the reading-
room all day, behind a newspaper, pretending to
read. Anything was better than to go back to Hert-
ford Street, where his mother and Daisy would be
watching him, and pitying him, and thinking about
him all day long.

He telegraphed to Lady Mary from the club early
in the afternoon . . . "Dining at Arthur's — may be
late. Don't sit up for me."

282 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

And having done this he curled himself up in
a big armchair, in an obscure corner, and pretended
to sleep. Men went in and out without noticing
him. He did not even attempt to dine; but he had
some tea at seven o'clock, and then walked to the
station at Charing Cross to see the last of the girl
he was to have married.

If she was to leave England to-night it would be
by that train, he thought. He took a ticket for
Dover, for the privilege of being on the platform
when the train started, and stood amidst the con-
fusion of anxious passengers and harried porters,
waiting for the last look, that look which he swore
to himself should be the last.

There was the usual crowd for the boat train,
and the faces that passed him all seemed to wear
the same expression, hurried, eager, and yet with a
certain look of pleased anticipation, as if there were
something revivifying in the mere fact of leaving one's
country. It was always the same look — till he saw
her face, and that was different.

Her husband was walking close beside her, hold-

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 283

ing her arm, hurrying her footsteps, talking to her,
flushed, eager, exultant, like a man who has just
won some great stake, and who can scarcely con-
tain himself for joy.

She was dressed in black, an alpaca skirt and
coat, a black toque, rather shabby clothes that she
had worn in Ireland. Conrad had never before seen
her in black, and the change was startling.

She was very pale, and she looked years older.
Her face was drawn with mental pain and her eyes
looked straight before her. Conrad had never
seen despair in a face till to-night. He took a step
forward unconsciously, with outstretched arms, as if
to snatch her from her doom. The sudden move-
ment was unseen in the crowd. A porter opened
the door of a compartment labelled "Engaged,"
and Middlemore lifted his bride into the carriage.
A servant came to the door and handed in travel-
ling bag, rug and sticks; and then went with the
porter to see the luggage bestowed. "These two
boxes for Dover, those three for Paris."

Conrad saw the new boxes, small and neat,

284 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

which had evidently been bought for the bride.
The bride! She who was to have been his bride.
Who was to have journeyed with him over that
joyous route, over the dancing sea, to lands that
were lovely and strange.

He saw the pale, grief-stricken face till the last
moment, till the train moved, and she was gone.

Why had she done this thing? What motive
could there have been for such cruel treason, if
its only issue was despair? By what spell had
this man held her? The mystery of it all was
maddening.

He left the station, and walked through the
streets like a man in a dream, till he found him-
self somehow in St. James's Park. It was dark by
that time, the thin darkness of summer, and the
stars were shining. He walked slowly, lost in
thought, in despairing wonder. Why had she done
this thing? The face he had seen was not the face
of a bride, but the face of a victim. So might
Jephthah's daughter have looked — wantonly sacrificed
to a father's irrational vow.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 285

He walked by the Green Park to Hyde Park,
and across the sunburnt grass to Kensington Gar-
dens. It was nearly ten o'clock when he found
himself at the north-western extremity of the gar-
dens, facing the railings, and watching the traffic
in the Bayswater Road, watching with eyes that
saw passing waggons and omnibuses, carts and car-
riages, as strange things, meaningless, a procession
of phantoms.

He took hold of the railings with his bare hands
clutching the iron bars with strained fingers, as if
to bring himself back to conscious life by that
painful contact of sharp -edged iron against sen-
sitive flesh. Since he left the railway station he
had been walking in a semi-conscious state, as he
had walked on that long journey from Abingdon
to Padstow; along what dusty roads, uphill and
downhill, across what bleak commons or rolling
moorland, he had never known. The same loss
of conscious identity had come upon him, or if
not the same, something that came too near that
perilous state. Memory was shaken. He had lost

2 86 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

count of time. Where had he been, what had he
been doing, since he heard of Irene's marriage?
Was it by days, weeks, or months that the interval
had to be measured?

"This means Roehampton," he said to himself,
frowning. "No, I will not go mad. Once is enough
— once, for one false woman — for one lovely wicked
face — the face that lures to madness or to death."

He set himself to count the passing vehicles,
standing there for a long time, staring into the
road, and watching now an omnibus, now a cab, a
smart tradesman's cart, a brougham with flashing
lamps, and then the rush of a motor, with great
flaring eyes like an angry dragon. He looked at
them, and studied them deliberately, and named
them to himself.

"No, I won't go mad."

He turned on his heel and walked back to Park
Lane.

A woman spoke to him in the shadow of the
trees.

"Oh, you poor wretch," he cried, giving her a

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 287

handful of gold, "you never used any man as
badly as I have been used," and passed on with
quickened pace, so that she could only stand gazing
at his receding figure, murmuring thanks that he
could not hear.

His mother came out of her room as he went
upstairs.

"What, you sat up for me after all," he ex-
claimed, "in spite of my wdre."

"I could not rest till I knew you were at
home." J ' _ ' ':.: •,..•.• ' -

"My best of mothers, don't worry yourself. I
am going to take this business quietly. I am used
to it, you see."

He kissed her, and went up to his own room.
His quiet voice and manner gave her some slight
comfort, but she lay awake all night, with an aching
heart, wondering what to-morrow would bring of grief
or terror.

Mother and son breakfasted tete-a-tete, Daisy

2 8b DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

having pretended a headache as an excuse for keep-
ing out of their way.

Conrad was perfectly calm, with the settled
calmness of a man who is resolved to bear his burden,
and who is strong enough to bear it.

"My dear mother, you must not be anxious
about me," he said, looking up and surprising Lady
Mary's watchful eyes, full of sad solicitude. "I have
come to grief for the second time in my life — •
which seems hard lines considering that I am not
thirty — but I am not going to knock under.
Indeed, far from knocking under, I am going
to make capital out of my misfortune. Those
African travels of mine — the Zambesi, Tanganyika
— Nyassa. I am going to make that fairy-tale a
true story."

"You want to go to Africa?"

"Isn't it better than going back to Roehamp-
ton?"

"Oh, my dearest," she cried, bursting into tears.

He comforted her with sweet words, and even
put on an air of gaiety.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 289

"^Miy, my dear mother, a couple of years knock-
ing about in Central Africa is no more nowadays
than the grand tour was when Lord Chesterfield
wrote those wonderful letters of his in the old house
hard by." '

Lady Mary was fain to listen as he reasoned \vith
her, arguing that a blow such as he had suffered
was not to be got over by walking about the West
End of London, or even mooning on the Italian
Lakes, or hunting in Hampshire. He had to do
something that would call upon his thews and sinews,
and give his brain a holiday.

"I won't go alone, ma'am, if it would fret you.
I know a splendid fellow who would go with me —
and who knows the country. I shall have to be
pretty artful to prevent his finding out that I don't
know it."

He went off directly after breakfast to find his
friend, and he set about his preparations for the
journey with red-hot haste. He contrived to be
occupied every day and almost every hour, till that
sultry afternoon when he stood with his mother and

Dead Love has Chains. I9

290 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Daisy Meredith in Southampton Docks, bidding them
good-bye, before he and his comrade went on board
the African steamer.

And then the women who loved him had to go
back to the desolate house in the land of conven-
tionalities, where one day and one year are painfully
like every other day and year, and to harden their
hearts against the pain of years in which they were
not to see him, years of peril for him, • years of
constant anxiety for them. It had to be borne.
Africa was better than Roehampton. Perils from
savages, perils from wild beasts, from climate, from
famine, were better than a mind extinguished, a
death in life.

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS, CQI

EPILOGUE.

Conrad kept his word to his mother, and in the

second autumn after the parting at Southampton he

was settled at Cranford, and Daisy Meredith had

her first ride after a pack that belonged to her

cousin, and in every individual whereof she could

take a personal interest. His African wanderings

had been marred by few misfortunes. A bout of

fever, a camp-fire that consumed the travellers'

stores, and left them in some danger of starvation,

had been the worst incidents in travels that had

extended from the Zambesi to the Congo. He

came back to England in vigorous health, and he

bore no outward signs of the disappointment that

had changed the current of his life. He took kindly

to the humdrum existence of the country squire,

and rode hard, but not recklessly. He invited his

friends to shoot with him over woods that had

19*

292 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

been carefully preserved during his absence, and
he was active and cheerful, if not particularly joyous.

The freshness of youth and delight in trivial
things had gone from him for ever. He read more,
and thought more, spending solitary hours in his
library. He interested himself in politics. He was
a kind and energetic landlord, and built cottages
that were ideal in healthfulness and comfort, aided
in all his plans by Daisy's knowledge of peasant life,
its needs and idiosyncrasies.

He looked, and seemed in manner and ideas,
ten years older than in the brief summer of Irene's
influence. When his mother tried to arouse his ambi-
tion, and wanted him to offer himself for his division
of the county, he smiled, and begged her to be
patient.

"I was seven years at Roehampton," he said, and
she understood the cryptic reply.

It would take him long to forget. The cure had
only begun in Africa. They would have to be patient,
and bide their time.

Daisy was his right hand in most things on the

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 1293

estate, on the home farm, in the stables and
kennels. She had all the instincts of a country-
bred girl, though she had languished in a London
suburb till her eighteenth year. A daring rider, a
fervid lover of the animal creation, ardent in the
chase but always sorry for the fox, she was never
more charming than at Cranford. And that knack
of being never in the way and never out of the way
was itself a charm.

Lady Mary watched and wondered. Daisy was
eight-and-twenty, but quite as pretty at that mature
age as she had been at eighteen, prettier perhaps by
the light of a developed intelligence that gave variety
and sparkle to the face. She was not a Romney
beauty, or a Raphael beauty, nor had she the
sensuous lips and the dreaming violet eyes of a
Rossetti beauty, but she was pretty enough to be the
sunshine of a good man's home, the smiling welcomer
at the end of a day's toil, the sympathising wife in
trouble and in joy. And she had bright and gracious
manners that would ensure her popularity as the wife
of a public man.

2 94 DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS.

Lady Mary thought that, however long the
courtship might hang fire, her son would end by
discovering that Daisy was something more to him
than the adopted sister, the useful friend, the good
"Pal" he affected now to consider her; and as
Daisy's father had been obliging enough to die
while Conrad was in Africa, there was one ob-
stacle the less to the marriage from a social point of
view.

Of course, Daisy's mother was a difficulty; but
that poor lady, having failed as a singing mistress,
as a milliner, as a typewriter, as a crystal-gazer, and
as a manicurist, would be amenable to reason, and
could be pensioned, and relegated to a modest villa
at Hastings or Ryde.

Conrad never uttered the name of his lost love
after his return from Africa; but he could not hope
to go through life without hearing of her, since Mr.
Middlemore had crowned himself with glory by
winning the Derby with Yorkshire Tyke, a horse of
his own breeding. After an Indian honeymoon he

DEAD LOVE HAS CHAINS. 295

had settled down in Yorkshire with his beautiful
wife, who shone as a star in a society made up of
land-owners in the neighbourhood, soldiers from
York, and the men who came from afar for the big
shoots. People talked of her as lovely, but with
cold and unattractive manners. As a personality
the jovial Middlemore was preferred to his beautiful
wife.

They came to London for a short time in the
season, but had no London house. They stayed at
one of the smart hotels, and spent the greater part
of their time at suburban race meetings and fashion-
able cricket or polo matches.

THE END.

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